CERN Scientists Looking for the Force

An anonymous reader writes "National Geographic has a fascinating article on the God Particle, which can help explain the Standard Model and get us closer to explain the Grand Unified Theory. The obligatory Star Wars-angle summary is even better: 'CERN's scientists, the fine people who brought us the W and Z particles, anti-hydrogen atoms and hyperlinked porn web pages, are now hard at work building the Large Hadron Collider to discover something even cooler: the Force. Yes, that Force. Or like physicists call it, the Higgs boson, a particle that carries a field which interacts with every living or inert matter.'"

Comments

Obligatory

[drunken_boxer777]

"Use the Large Hadron Collider, Luke."

Re:Obligatory

[Stanistani]

There are two particles involved, differentiated by spin - light and dark.

They will inevitably come to the dark side.

Re:Obligatory

[smitty97]

"Use the Large Hadron Collider, Luke." Don't you mean the "Force"?
No, the "Schwartz"!

Re:Obligatory

[Opportunist]

Proof that light and dark force are like matter and its antimatter: Every time Luke and Darth Vader met, something huge blew up.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Cowtard]

I wonder how many papers/emails/reports/whatever have been written where a d/r reversal typo has made its way to the final draft.

Re:Obligatory

[chissg]

I wonder how many papers/emails/reports/whatever have been written where a d/r reversal typo has made its way to the final draft. You jest, but I know of one real case where a badly spelled, "hadron.F" (yes, FORTRAN -- really) made it into the CVS repository.

Re:Obligatory

[fbjon]

I wonder how many papers/emails/reports/whatever have been written where a d/r reversal typo has made its way to the final draft. At least a few, it would seem.

Re:Obligatory

[repapetilto]

hilarious

Re:Obligatory

[Ticklemonster]

Finally, a good reason to change my sig.

Re:Obligatory

[justinlee37]

Well, as of just now, Google has 3,160 hits for "large hardon collider"

Re:Obligatory

[CrazyClimber]

Fundamental nuclear fail.

Re:Obligatory

[Chris Burke]

The Force... Whatever.

Call me when they think they've found The Schwartz.

Re:Obligatory

[tgd]

*fixes robots.txt on his website*

Everyone has a pet name for it, right!?

Re:Obligatory

[furbearntrout]

37 results (vs 19,300 for hadron collider).
Thats about one fifth of a percent, Not that many.
as the parent said, just a few.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

37 results (vs 19,300 for hadron collider). 19,300 for hadron collider). Thats about one fifth of a percent

Thank you, Mr. Arithmetic.

Re:Obligatory

[TapeCutter]

Hah - Years ago a boss of mine wrote a journal article about pen based computing the revolved around an O/S called penpoint. The article metioned MS's contribution that was marketed as 'Windows for pen'. The typo was a missing space that resulted in the phrase...

"Windows for penis..."

Re:Obligatory

[maxume]

Not in ESB man.

Well, unless you are talking about the acting when Luke finds out who his daddy be.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

The Higgs force has been posited to endow atoms with 'mass'. Such mass is then also subject to inertia. Both are in our present physics calculations. I wonder whether we aim to create this particle or simply detect it? Suppose we create it, would an effect of it endow nearby mass with even greater apparent mass? And how about the more important anti-Higgs particle and its anti-Higgs force that would take away or render particles of matter, atoms, massless. What of matter rendered massless, would it accelerate infinitely given the smallest nudge? What of the structural integrity of such massless matter? Would other forces hold it together. These would be quite important for astronauts on a ship utilizing anti-Higgs force related propulsion.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing the physicists I work with, I wouldn't be surprised if it were intentional.

Re:Obligatory

[FishWithAHammer]

Fundamental nucular fail.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Obligatory

[budgenator]

I'm just dyslexic enough that it took me a few months not to read it that way.

Re:Obligatory

[Adambomb]

Yeah, and theres an even easier reversal issue for typists.

Re:Obligatory

[rrohbeck]

It's very easy to get a word hardwired into your fingers.
I still type "decnet" every single time I try to write "decent".

Re:Obligatory

[Flodis]

Yeah, and theres an even easier reversal issue for typists.

That is funny.

I wonder if those CERN types would appreciate it if they knew that you don't need a Large Hardon Collider to find it.

Re:Obligatory

[xarak]

All my word documents end with ":wq"

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an interesting book on this Higgs Boson.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

wanna bet how many of these aren't typos, but result from some sort of dare?

Re:Obligatory

[sentientbeing]

Sounds good. Imagine a Faraday cage for Mass. No inertia! Wow. We'd colonize the galaxy within a century.

Re:Obligatory

[Adambomb]

Worse still would be the increase in downloads if he did another My Life as a Bosom...

Course the physicist demographic would plummet sharply.

Re:Obligatory

[Opportunist]

In physics, that's called a measurement error.

What?

[Brian Gordon]

a particle that carries a field which interacts with every living or inert matter

So basically, gravity?

Re:What?

[Wandering Wombat]

Basically, no.

Re:What?

[The Ancients]

No. According to Newton's Law of Gravitation the force of gravitation allows two particles with mass to attract one another.

This doesn't cover all particles.

Re:What?

[Wandering Wombat]

I got troll-modded for saying that a Higgs boson was not gravity? How does that work?

The Higgs boson is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics. 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, it would explain the difference between the massless photon and the relatively massive W and Z bosons. Elementary particle masses, and the differences between electromagnetism (caused by the photon) and the weak force (caused by the W and Z bosons), are critical to many aspects of the structure of microscopic (and hence macroscopic) matter; thus, if it exists, the Higgs boson has an enormous effect on the world around us.

Re:What?

[kalirion]

Photons aren't supposed to have mass (otherwise they couldn't travel at light speed), so how are they affected by gravity?

Re:What?

[SnoopJeDi]

You're along the right track....sort-of.

It's a good deal above my head as an undergrad, but I do understand that the Higgs boson is somehow involved in giving rise to the nature of all other particles.

Brian Greene explains it pretty well in layman's terms in his book, The Elegant Universe.

Re:What?

[fbjon]

They're affected by curved space due to gravity.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got troll-modded for saying that a Higgs boson was not gravity? How does that work?
The Real WTF is that you also got an "Informative" for it.

Re:What?

[Wandering Wombat]

Well, to people who think that a Higgs boson is gravity, I guess it is informative. For everyone else, it's sort of like saying "a watermelon is NOT a puppy dog".

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

That description is gravity as described by Newton's universal gravitation. Under general relativity, gravity is a warping of space-time, not a force. In the various incarnations of quantum field theory, gravity is mediated by a (hypothetical) elementary particle called the graviton. It works, put simply, much like the electromagnetic field, which is mediated by virtual photons, but in this case it would be virtual gravitons.

Re:What?

[KublaiKhan]

Sort of a meta-particle, as it were.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got troll-modded for saying that a Higgs boson was not gravity?

As this is slashdot, your comment most be pre-approved by the RNC, Pat Robertson, or the crack-smoking monkeys called libertarians. And we don't approve anyone who has the appropriate background to comment on matters relating to particle physics.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Space isn't even a particle and doesn't have mass, so why should it curve?

I wonder, does gravity affect space or merely everything in that space? Could we tell the difference?

Re:What?

[delibes]

Because Newton wasn't quite right, and matter bends space-time which means photons do noticeably bend around really massive objects. Cool.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

For everyone else, it's sort of like saying "a watermelon is NOT a puppy dog".

For real? Whoa... MOD PARENT UP +1 INFORMATIVE!

Re:What?

[eln]

Ah, but the Higgs boson would not exist without Alan W. Livingston (The Alan Livingst-on particle?), who was responsible for the creation of all Bozons

Re:What?

[kalirion]

Oops, must've accidentally clicked the "post anonymous" checkbox, how annoying.

Re:What?

[andy314159pi]

"a watermelon is NOT a puppy dog".

So I laid down all those newspapers for nothing!?

Re:What?

[kebes]

As the other poster mentioned, photons are affected by gravity in as much as they travel through a space-time that is curved by massive objects. So the path of a photon (e.g. light) can be deflected by a gravitational field.

To those who would then say "Aha! So clearly photons do interact with gravity!", it's important to note that photons may be affected by the curvature of spactime, but they don't have mass and thus don't interact gravitationally. For instance, photons cannot attract each other gravitationally (whereas matter does), and a photon won't attract matter gravitationally.

Re:What?

[fbjon]

Space isn't even a particle and doesn't have mass, so why should it curve? I wonder, does gravity affect space or merely everything in that space? Could we tell the difference? Yes we can detect the difference: light curves in a gravity well. Also you seem to be confused about curving space. Mass causes space to curve, lots of mass, lots of curvature. The effect of this curving is what we call gravity.

Re:What?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

So basically, gravity?

Err, no. The Higgs boson is the modern-day equivalent of the luminiferous aether.

Re:What?

[MightyMartian]

Unfortunately folks are mixing Newtonian and Einsteinian explanations of gravity. In Newtonian physics, the particles exert attraction on one another, in Einsteinian physics spacial geometry is curved around gravity wells (whether that's an atom, a human or a black hole), and it is that curvature that causes bodies to attract.

Cue the bowling ball on the mattress with the marble moving towards it. That's a reasonable analogy of what goes on.

Then cue quantum mechanics, which takes such a delightful model and tosses it on its head.

Re:What?

[wizardforce]

not directly, space can "bend" and light traveling straight through curved space will curve as well. secondly, photons, the particles that light is composed of has a rest mass of zero although because light carries energy and energy has mass light also has a mass because of the energy it is carrying.

Re:What?

[Guy Harris]

Photons aren't supposed to have mass (otherwise they couldn't travel at light speed), so how are they affected by gravity?

By having momentum and energy, even if they don't have rest mass, and by living in a world where, it appears, Einsteinian gravity (i.e., general relativity), where it's energy and momentum, rather than just (rest) mass, that matters, rather than Newtonian gravity.

Re:What?

[GooRue]

Jumping ahead a couple centuries, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity indicates that even massless particles, e.g. photons, are affected by space-time curvature. See Gravitational Lensing.

Re:What?

[Opportunist]

Not necessarily. Wait 'til you cut your puppy open and you'll be glad you did.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that light had a dual nature? Waves and particles. Doesn't the photoelectric effect demonstrate that photons have sufficient mass to knock electrons around?

Re:What?

[GigaplexNZ]

"For instance, photons cannot attract each other gravitationally (whereas matter does), and a photon won't attract matter gravitationally." What makes you so sure? A photon might attract another photon gravitationally, but the force might be so small compared to other factors. It is ignorant to say with 100% certainty what does and doesn't happen when the top scientists are still trying to figure this stuff out.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Newton's law is actually neither an explanation of gravity nor is it a particularly good description of it.

It is only an approximation to Einstein's law of gravity. As an example, Newton does not say anything about the speed of propagation of gravity. That is if one of the two particles moved suddenly (by firing a rocket engine for example) how long would it take the other particle to notice. Another problem with Newton's law is it does not describe correctly the attraction between massless particles like photons.

So really the question is what about Einstein's law of gravity? Well it does describe all particles, but has some deficiencies as well. Most notably it does not allow for a quantum description!

So what makes gravity tick?

Re:What?

[Sponge Bath]

Photons aren't supposed to have mass

Peasant at witch trial: "What about really *big* photons?"

Re:What?

[owlnation]

Unfortunately folks are mixing Newtonian and Einsteinian explanations of gravity

Yep, never cross the streams.

Re:What?

[Kamokazi]

Not on a Tempurpedic matress. Maybe that's why NASA uses it, it defies the laws of gravity!

Re:What?

[Brian Gordon]

Get off the vent or I'll have you bent.

Re:What?

[Original Replica]

The effect of this curving is what we call gravity.

So is this the stuff that is being curved by gravity? Is the Higgs Bosun what "the fabric of space" is made of? These are honest questions, IANAPhysicist.

Re:What?

[sponga]

You beat me to it.

First thing I thought of was that commercial where the person is jumping on one end of the mattress and the full glass of wine on the other end.

Newton would be amazed.

Re:What?

[thewesterly]

Gallagher sighs in relief.

Re:What?

[novakyu]

Er, photon has sufficient momentum to kick other things around. Normally, momentum is given by p = gamma * m * v (gamma = 1 for v much less than c), but for particles with m = 0, this is wrong and momentum is now given by p = E / c (where E, for photons, is given by h*f).

Unless you are going to invoke "relativistic mass" (fewer and fewer physicists use this term—mainly because a relativistic mass is the same damned thing as relativistic energy, given the correspondence between mass and energy), photon has no mass.

Nevertheless, my sibling posters are right, and the source of gravity (the source term in the Einstein equations, analogous to the electric charges in Maxwell's equations) is the stress-energy tensor (not simply rest mass of particles) and photons do contribute to that.

Re:What?

[Jarjarthejedi]

Not quite, he does raise the valid question of why spacetime curves, something which I've never seen answered anywhere. It can't be gravity causing the curve, as gravity is the curve, so what causes it is a good question. Obviously the answer is mass, but why and how that mass curves spacetime is still a good question...

Re:What?

[Exiton]

Photons have zero rest mass, if they stopped moving they would have no mass, but as particles travel faster they gain mass via our favorite equation E=mc2. So Photons can be considered as having a mass as they have energy. That and the curved space time thing stated later, that works too. The higgs boson does not create gravity, it creates mass. The higgs field is the field was created to explain where where mass comes from, it's the higgs field interacting with matter. The higgs boson would be the particle associated with that field similar to the way the photon is the particle associated with the electromagnetic field. Gravity affects particles with mass so the higgs boson is related to gravity but no nearly as directly as the article implies. The graviton is the particle of gravity, theoretically that is as it has never been seen. For a good demonstration of how gravity works try throwing heavy breakable things off the roof and put the video on YouTube.

Re:What?

[Roger W Moore]

Unless you are going to invoke "relativistic mass" (fewer and fewer physicists use this term--mainly because a relativistic mass is the same damned thing as relativistic energy, given the correspondence between mass and energy)

Actually the reason physicists don't use the term is that, at best, it is misleading and at a fundamental level is simply wrong. Mass is a Lorentz invariant: it does not change no matter HOW fast you are going. Einstein himself knew this and advised against referring to it as such. Despite this many undergrad text books irritatingly refer to it and then tell you not to use it. Which is like giving a sweet to a kid and then telling them not to eat it!

Re:What?

[kipton]

This is incorrect as stated. Photons don't have rest mass, but they DO have energy and momentum. It is the energy and momentum which couple to gravity, so that photons do interact gravitationally.

A good reference is here:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/light_mass.html

Re:What?

[greenguy]

I understand this when it comes to stars and planets. What I don't understand about the curvature of space is how it makes my pencil roll off my desk and fall on the floor.

And if you can't ask this on Slashdot, where can you ask it?

Re:What?

[bcrowell]

To those who would then say "Aha! So clearly photons do interact with gravity!", it's important to note that photons may be affected by the curvature of spactime, but they don't have mass and thus don't interact gravitationally. For instance, photons cannot attract each other gravitationally (whereas matter does), and a photon won't attract matter gravitationally.
Nope. In general relativity, the curvature of spacetime, as measured by the Einstein tensor, is related to the stress-energy tensor, T. The T00 component of the stress-energy tensor is a mass-energy density. Mass and energy are equivalent in relativity, E=mc2. So a photon with energy E creates the same gravitational field as a material particle of mass E/c2. If it worked the way you're suggesting, with matter attracting photons but photons not attracting matter, it would violate conservation of momentum.

Re:What?

[SecondOrderEffect]

Ok. Considering a curvature in spacetime is just a convienience. It is useful to construct field theories because you don't have to worry about the time it takes energy to propagate. You just calculate the field at every point and at any point in time. Then you can ignore the particles that created the field and just consider what happens locally to determine the motion of your particle. In other words, the field is just a construction of a differential (as opposed to integral) form of the force equation.

That being said, photons are most definitely affected by gravity. Gravitational fields are created and interact with energy. Thus photons have a gravitational field and attract each other gravitationally (at least theorically, because the induced gravitional field is both incredibly small and utterly dwarfed by the electromagnetic interation of the photon so we haven't been able to measure it yet). Energy is equivalent to mass (think E=mc^2). It is true that photons have no rest mass, but they do have an effective mass, seeing how they are energy carriers. Electrons have a gravitational field. Electric fields have a gravitational field. Even gravity induces a gravitational field (the self-interaction effect, AKA inertia).

ANYTHING that is deflected by a gravitational field's curved spacetime is by definition interacting with gravity. Curved spacetime IS gravity, not just an effect of it. If two objects don't attract each other gravitationally, then they wouldn't be deflected by a gravitational field. Think neutrons in an electromagnetic field. They have no electric attraction (to first order anyway) and they are, for exactly the same reason, unaffected by a magnetic or electric field (again to first order).

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends. How long did you plan on keeping them? You know what happens after a few days.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right that in principle the stress-energy tensor means a gravitational effect... But has the gravitational effect of particles with no rest mass ever been measured? I remember hearing that the effect had to be taken into account in order to fit the CMB properly. Is that true?

Do we have any direct experimental evidence of particles with no rest mass generating gravitational effects, or is this based entirely on general relativity? The reason I ask is because as far as I understand, in the standard model (and extensions thereof) there is no indication that photons should interact with (or create, etc.) gravitons.

If so, and the notion of photons (and other massless particles) contributing to gravity is a purely relativistic/classical prediction, then is this another example of a question that won't be fully answered until we have a proper theory of quantum gravity?

Re:What?

[fbjon]

Your pencil is in precisely the same position as any other object, be it planet or moon: in a gravity well. Thus, the Earth's gravity well causes the pencil to roll "down" the slope of curved space, and the gravity well of the pencil in turn causes the Earth to roll towards the pencil, although only imperceptibly. Same thing with things out in space, except things in orbit have enough speed to move along and around the curvature of the well, instead of just bumbling down into the center.

Re:What?

[superwiz]

Well, isn't that the question that's asked at the next stage? First, question "what's going on" (aka "what is it") asked. And then the question "what makes it come to be" is asked. I am not a physicist, so I have to ask are we done with "what's going on", yet? Otherwise, "why is it going on" is probably premature.

Re:What?

[TapeCutter]

Your pencil doesn't move, everything else does. /itsallrelative

Re:What?

[kebes]

Thank you (and the other posters) for the correction. I clearly didn't think about that one for long enough.

Re:What?

[AJWM]

Photons aren't supposed to have mass

No, photons don't have rest mass -- but then, they're never at rest. While they're moving, they have energy, and therefore mass (just not very much).

Re:What?

[AJWM]

No, the spacetime curve occurs first. Sometimes matter (which has mass) collects in these curved spacetime pockets. Now, astronomers have determined that there's more gravity out there than can be accounted for by observable matter, so they invented "dark matter". Really it's just pockets of curved spacetime that haven't collected enough matter to be noticeable.

As for why it's curved in the first place..well, why wouldn't it be? Why would the flatness of spacetime be any more uniform than the big-bang ~3K background radiation is?

(And yes, I just made all this stuff up, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone else has already suggested it.)

Re:What?

[Wordplay]

Er, photon has sufficient momentum to kick other things around. Normally, momentum is given by p = gamma * m * v (gamma = 1 for v much less than c), but for particles with m = 0, this is wrong and momentum is now given by p = E / c (where E, for photons, is given by h*f).

This has been a really interesting discussion. Not nitpicking, just asking for clarification. Isn't momentum consistent between m > 0 and m = 0, as long as you always put it in terms of E?

E = mc^2
m = E/c^2

P = gamma * m * v
P = gamma * E/c^2 * v

(since for a photon, v = c)

P = gamma * E/c^2 * c
P = gamma * E/c

As long as gamma is 1, seems equivalent. I know you said gamma approaches 1 as v approaches 0, and photons are v = c. Does this mean gamma approaching 1 is also a factor of rest mass (i.e., if you have none, it's always 1?)

Re:What?

[WilliamSChips]

There are acceptible curves of spacetime in the absence of matter, and they are called "gravity waves". Dark matter is just matter that doesn't interact with photons.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it does cover all particles. Even massless particles, which is what I guess you were thinking of. Massless particles have an energy, and hence a mass (think E=mc^2). So gravity affects them. That's why gravitational lensing works with "massless" photons.

Re:What?

[blueg3]

Photons don't have rest mass. Of course, they don't rest, either. As a travelling photon has energy, it also has mass.

Re:What?

[LS]

I never liked the bowling ball on the mattress analogy because actual gravity is needed to make the bowling ball move, so the analogy is muddled. Is there another analogy that would work without the use of actual gravity?

LS

Re:What?

[coastwalker]

Uh-huh thanks for that. I finally grok what all the fuss is about the Higgs from your analogy of the Higgs to the gravity field and the photon to the electromagnetic field. Just because we don't see Higgs running about all over the place on earth doesn't mean that there isn't a gravitational field. Just like if we looked inside a Faraday cage and saw no photons doesn't mean that there isn't an electromagnetic field to describe.

Another thought is, does this mean that there is a zoo of Higgs like things and is there an analogy to the kinds of things we have discovered about the electromagnetic field. Like the electron has charge and we have electrostatic attraction, atoms have magnetic (moments?) and forces between them. So would the zoo of Higgs like entities express similar disparate behaviors with a root in the mechanisms of the gravitational field? If we look at large scale things in the universe like galactic clusters and decide that they have 'dark matter' expressing additional mass effects through the lensing of quasars, does that mean that the gravitational fields equivalent of 'magnetism' for example only shows up on that large scale - which would explain how tough it is for us to do experiments and play with the gravitational fields inner workings down here on earth.

Given all this speculative rambling I'm now very interested in what could be learned from the Higgs if it is found by the LHC.

Mind you as Douglas Adams said 'Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, well that's just peanuts to space."

I make it about 10 to the power of 60 between vacuum fluctuations and the observable universe and if the multi-universe view is right, to accommodate all the different choices of the basic physical constants, there's another 10 to the power of 500 on top of that. Its going to take quite a bit of computing power to work out the details of 10 to the power 500 different universes each with a volume containing things over a range of scales of 10 to the 60. Looks like we need a bit more than 'Deep Thought' to do this calculation. I dont think even IBM is going to build a computer significantly bigger than the size of our observable universe any time soon. Mind you theres still a passable living to be made appearing on tv chat shows talking about how difficult is is answering the question of 'what is the answer to life the universe and everything'.

As an aside, the physicists say that many of the universes in the multi-universe have bad choices for the physical constants that would make life and therefore intelligence like ours very unlikely. This neatly does away with the anthropic principle for one thing, but it also raises the intriguing idea that there might be universes with far better choices of the physical constants than ours that give rise to something spectacularly more competent than carbon based lifeforms about to extinguish themselves with the greenhouse effect. (SETI is wasting its time looking for carbon based lifeforms, they all die out spectacularly quickly in a hot Venusian fog).

Cosmology has to be just THE most fascinating subject going. Of course we shouldn't get too worried about all this stuff, the answer as Douglas pointed out is quite simple 'keep on banging those rocks together' :=)

http://dingo.care2.com/cards/flash/5409/galaxy.swf

Re:What?

[rmerry72]

I understand this when it comes to stars and planets. What I don't understand about the curvature of space is how it makes my pencil roll off my desk and fall on the floor.

It doesn't. Curved space is a perfect explanation for why things moving in a straight line curve through space, aka planets, stars, light, etc. But nobody is sure why the gravity attracts to objects together in the first place. The theoretical graviton is supposed to transfer force in the same way that the other forces are transmitted but none has been seen because the energies required are phenomenal. Phenomenal as in about a billion times what the LHC can produce. Gravitons - in theory again - act at Plank lengths (10-33 cm) which is why its hard to test.

Nobody was sure why electromagnetism produced electricity for a while either even though Faraday had proven the relationship through observation. This had to wait for relativity and the concept of electrons to explain. Magnetism is caused by the time dilation of electrons as they travel down the wire - yes its a relevalistic effect of the transmission of electricity.

Gravity is not cracked yet.

Re:What?

[ioshhdflwuegfh]

Well, to people who think that a Higgs boson is gravity,[...] That's already funny enough.

Re:What?

[TeknoHog]

Not quite, he does raise the valid question of why spacetime curves, something which I've never seen answered anywhere. It can't be gravity causing the curve, as gravity is the curve, so what causes it is a good question. Obviously the answer is mass, but why and how that mass curves spacetime is still a good question...

I've been wondering about the same thing, particularly when it comes to the marbles-on-a-rubber-sheet analogy. The sheet is obviously curved because our familiar Newtonian gravity pulls the ball/marble downwards. But that curvature then becomes Einsteinian gravity. So the analogy is a prime example of circular reasoning.

A somewhat related issue is, why is the speed of light constant? Special relativity seems merely an observation of how the universe works, not a particular insight as it doesn't explain the basic premise.

Re:What?

[ceoyoyo]

As I understand it, the Higgs field is what gives matter inertial mass. In some interpretations you can twist that around to be the "fabric of space."

Re:What?

[Kjella]

I've been wondering about the same thing, particularly when it comes to the marbles-on-a-rubber-sheet analogy. The sheet is obviously curved because our familiar Newtonian gravity pulls the ball/marble downwards. But that curvature then becomes Einsteinian gravity. So the analogy is a prime example of circular reasoning.

A somewhat related issue is, why is the speed of light constant? Special relativity seems merely an observation of how the universe works, not a particular insight as it doesn't explain the basic premise. Science never answers why, at best it's some result that falls out of another equation because of even more fundamental properties of the universe. Even if we found the theory of everything and it explained all the forces and gravity and lightspeed and whatnot, it's by no means certain that it's the only possible solution. Like in geometry we have euclidian, elliptic and hyperbolic geometry and they're all self-consistant. And if you ask why our universe is the way it is, the answer that "it's the 3rd solution to the hypersuperstringball-theory of everything" is really no more meaningful than it is today. No matter how well we model it the universe simply is, the whys are left to philsophers and the religious.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

'Cause it's heavy. Doh. Mass curves spacetime because it's heavy, man. Really heavy. It's like, way out there.

"Obviously the answer is mass..."

Obviously when it comes to unknowns in science one should avoid words like obviously.

Re:What?

[novakyu]

This has been a really interesting discussion. Not nitpicking, just asking for clarification. Isn't momentum consistent between m > 0 and m = 0, as long as you always put it in terms of E? Well ... that might be an interesting idea, but I think there are a few problems.

1. gamma( = 1/sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)) does not depend on mass, so if you define it as 1 where v = c, it's rather arbitrary (as v -> c, gamma approaches infinity, so it's not a "removable discontinuity").
2. When you write E = mc^2, you are talking about a particle's rest energy. In fact, E = gamma * m * c^2 (and, of course, if the particle is at rest, gamma = 1). ....

Fixing above problems, this is as far as I can take (... at least from my limited knowledge of undergraduate special relativity): If you write p = E/c (which is certainly the case for photons and all (so far undiscovered) massless particles), then for massive particles, it works out as:

using E = gamma * m * c^2, with gamma = 1/sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2) (this is the correct formula for particles that are not at rest; E = mc^2 only gives the "rest energy"), we get:

p = gamma * m * c^2 / c = gamma * m * c

But of course, the correct formula is p = gamma * m * v, so it's not right. I suppose you could "define" momentum as p = E * (v/c^2) ... but the real question is, what kind of physical insight does this provide?

I personally don't see anything wrong with having two different formulas for massive case (p = gamma * m * v) and the massless case (p = E/c), as these are fundamentally different cases (see: ongoing question of neutrino mass ... although I think by now it's mostly settled that it's not massless).

That's all fine and good...

[The Ancients]

...but shouldn't they be focusing on something much more worthwhile?

Like a working model of a lightsabre. Now that'd be really cool...

Re:That's all fine and good...

[Opportunist]

And how do you want to use it sensibly without the force, you insensitive clod?

Re:That's all fine and good...

[Anonymous Coward]

like creating a magnetic field shaper to suspend nanoprisms and thus give a high energy laser a sword shape ?
( nuclear reactor not included )

Re:That's all fine and good...

[TheLink]

How many people that want a lightsaber would want to use it sensibly?

Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

What if they piss billions of dollars into this machine and there is no Higgs Boson.

Does that mean There Is No God?

Good grief - theists are such asshats.

RS

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[Pojut]

If there is no Higgs Boson, oh well...the collider has many other uses that can help move our scientific development along.

Christ I sounded like a politician right there...but it's true.

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[SnoopJeDi]

Parent pretty much sums up particle physics, and why people don't get it.

If they don't find a Higgs boson, they're still stepping into a massive new range of collision energy. I think the LHC will produce collisions with a total energy of 14TeV (I haven't read about this for a while).

This step up allows all sorts of other interesting experiments to be run too.

Not to mention, GP smells a little under-the-bridge. But so does every post related to religion on slashdot.

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[jamstar7]

are you suggesting perchance to use politicians in the collider similar to the Superconducting Kitty Collider?

I could get behind that...

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[Pojut]

I think we should put a little flag in there with a picture of Hello Kitty on it, and make it a game. The flying politicos have to try to grab it as they go hurtling around.

The flag will be pink, naturally...

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[mOdQuArK!]

I prefer the idea of smashing politicians into each other to see if the resultant collision creates an honest politician (the equivalent of antimatter).

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[somersault]

I think you're a little confused. The large hardon collider won't work properly if you're behind it - you want the large black hole collider, next door.

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[sconeu]

The large hardon collider

So that's why the Web (another CERN invention) is used to collect pr0n!!!!

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[Opportunist]

No experiment that tests a solid theory is a waste. If there's no Higgs Boson, there is no Higgs Boson. But then we have proof that there is none.

We're currently in the "godlike state". We believe there is one. We have some pointers leading us to believe there is one, just like the humans of all times had pointers leading them to think there is a God (or Gods, depending on your faith). The difference is, science has the means to verify or falsify its theories. Whether you can ever proof that there is a God or there is none, well, kinda hard to say. God doesn't offer a test for his existance, so you have to stay in your state of belief.

Science offers you a way to test its theories. You might not be able yet to test them because you need tools that cannot be built yet, but once you build them (and they now did), you have a test, and you can find out whether the theory holds its water or whether you can toss it out and work up something else.

That is what science is about.

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[Opportunist]

Even if it doesn't, I'd consider the experiment a success.

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[UncleTogie]

Good grief - theists are such asshats.

Funny, I never found anything about the guy who coined the term "God Particle" being a theist. A top physicist, maybe. Nobel prize winner? No doubt. But a theist?

No, snarky theists are too busy yelling at snarky atheists... who are busy yelling at snarky theists...

No need for religious discussion here.

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[peterpi]

I browse with a +6 bias on troll (for the comedy), so your comment was near the top :)

About a year ago I was lucky enough to attend an informal talk given by Dr Helen Heath of Bristol University, who is involved in the LHC project. At the talk, somebody asked pretty much the same question; what if it finds nothing? Isn't it an awful waste of money that could be spent on $GOOD_CAUSE?

The answer was this: While it certainly is an expensive great big hole in the ground, the project has been funded by taxes on European citizens, and there's quite a lot of them. The grand total came out at something like 2 pounds sterling (~$4) per taxpayer. It has already advanced our technology to the point where pretty much anybody would be happy with the cost.

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[Anonymous Coward]

The saddest thing here isn't the trolling asshat who thinks that the God Particle's properties are determined by its name, but the fact that somewhere, for some reason, some moderator thinks that innane comment is interesting

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[blueg3]

The average taxpayer gets a lot of benefit per tax dollar spent on pure research. While it may seem our fancy-ass supercolliders cost millions and millions of dollars (they do!), there just really isn't that much federal funding spent on pure research... relative to the rest of the federal budget!

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[ceoyoyo]

If they don't find the Higgs, and the LHC is capable of exploring the region where the lightest Higgs is supposed to be, then the standard model needs revision. In many ways that's MORE exciting than if the LHC finds the Higgs and just confirms what we already think we know.

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[ceoyoyo]

In his book Lederman estimates that a third of the world's GNP is somehow related to quantum mechanics. Seems a pretty good return on investment so far.

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[l0b0]

What is also often forgotten in this discussion is that as long as the LHC works at all it will get us at least one huge step forward in particle physics. It is poised to reveal which of the competing theories of the day is right, but if none of them are right (i.e., no Higgs particle, no extra dimensions, no black holes), that would be the biggest surprise of all - The physicists would have to go back to the drawing board and come up with completely different theories.

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[Oligonicella]

And what other answer would you expect from her. Nothing like blithely taking four bucks from each taxpayer to satisfy your personal curiosity and then claiming they'd be satisfied with dubious technological advances.

Re:Here's a question: what if it's not there?

[Fatalis]

Not to mention, GP smells a little under-the-bridge. But so does every post related to religion on slashdot.

if it's every post, then that includes yours too, doesn't it?

The keeps of the force will use the force to stop.

[Joe The Dragon]

The keeps of the force will use the force to stop it form being know and the MIB, SGC, HWS, CIA, NSA, FBI, MI6, M12 and others will cover it up.

Atheism

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe in the God Particle. ...you knew that was coming.

Re:Atheism

[Anonymous Coward]

But how fast can you collide your large hardon?

Re:Atheism

[mithus]

The god particle believes in you

Re:Atheism

[ultranova]

"The God Particle has decayed. And we are the ones to have split it."

Oblig.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's in the Midichlorians reference.

I misread that.

[Trigun]

"...and hyperlinked porn web pages, are now hard at work building the Large Hadron Collider..."

Hadron...

Dammit, too much time on Slashdot

Re:I misread that.

[WarJolt]

Sometimes I wish I too was dyslectic. The things I miss out on.

Re:I misread that.

[SatanicPuppy]

I spent years thinking Evian water was Naive water...That was back when bottled water was weird, so I was surprised that a company would so obviously insult their customers. Very punk rock.

I was quite disappointed when I found out the truth.

Luke...

[ndnspongebob]

May the porn be with you

Experimental particle physics sounds like fun...

[The Ancients]

From a linked article:

That's the essence of experimental particle physics: You smash stuff together and see what other stuff comes out.

and you get to do it with really expensive, shiny toys :)

*A wave of magnetic flux passes*

[Jedi Holocron]

These are not the particles you are looking for.

proper translation

[circletimessquare]

hard at work, CERN's scientists are now
the Large Hadron Collider, they are building
brought us the W and Z particles, the fine people did
anti-hydrogen atoms and hyperlinked porn web pages, they brought us as well, they did
to discover something even cooler, they are
the Force, it is
that Force, yes, it is
carries a field, it does, the particle
interacts with every living or inert matter, it does
the Higgs boson, it is
call it so, physicists do

Re:proper translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm
the little green thing, you like dont you?

Grand Unified Theory

[should_be_linear]

If they are to find "Grand Unified Theory" I wander if it contains not only "The Function" that explains all interactions in universe but more importantly, why is function evaluated at all and how it is evaluated. Is it possible that any mathematical function can evaluate itself, and if not, is there any other explanation? That would be perhaps more interesting answer then The Function itself.

Re:Grand Unified Theory

[user317]

If they are to find "Grand Unified Theory" I wander if it contains not only "The Function" that explains all interactions in universe but more importantly, why is function evaluated at all and how it is evaluated. Is it possible that any mathematical function can evaluate itself, and if not, is there any other explanation? That would be perhaps more interesting answer then The Function itself. Unfortunately its lazy evaluated, so we'll never know.

Re:Grand Unified Theory

[borgboy]

omgplzmodfunnykthxbye

Re:Grand Unified Theory

[Lemming Mark]

[quote]Is it possible that any mathematical function can evaluate itself,[/quote] Well, a Turing Machine can simulate a Turing Machine. Moreover, any Turing Powerful means of computation can both simulate and be simulated by a Turing Machine..

Re:Grand Unified Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

Calm down and stop taking whatever you took.

Re:Grand Unified Theory

[sankyuu]

I can imagine the awe when we learn that the function yields... 42!

Re:Grand Unified Theory

[Agripa]

Lazy evaluation could certainly explain quantum mechanics.

Re:Grand Unified Theory

[TapeCutter]

Or is the GUT just a regular function that emerges from a few sub-evaluators that are part of The Evaluator. Our brain is an evaluator and we each have our own "function" and when they agree on something they modify The Function that is said to emerge from The Chaos of The Universe.

Taking it one step further a cell is an evaluator that was constructed by a function that emerges from the cell's construction.

The inexplicable power of mathematics to predict the behaviour of the Universe is telling us something about what we call 'mind'. Finding that 'something' would be as revolutionary as Copernicus, Darwin or Eienstien all of whom moved man away from the center of creation.

Re:Grand Unified Theory

[tm2b]

Nice try, but it's turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way down.

Re:Grand Unified Theory

[machine of god]

I'm gonna take a shot in the dark here and guess that it evaluates itself.

If every possible mode of being is, then it exists because it must exist. Or at least, that's how I rationalize observing such seemingly unlikely balance.

Re:Grand Unified Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you getting functions mixed up with magic spells?

Well, good bye little blue planet ...

[Sonic McTails]

Argh, don't these guys watch TV?, the entire planet will be reduced to the size of a pea once the mass of the Higgs boson is known ....

(for the mods, its a reference to the scifi show Lexx ...)

Re:Well, good bye little blue planet ...

[KublaiKhan]

Would a particle that gives other particles mass have mass itself?

Re:Well, good bye little blue planet ...

[Guy Harris]

Would a particle that gives other particles mass have mass itself?

Yes.

Re:Well, good bye little blue planet ...

[172pilot]

If you have to explain your joke, is it indeed a "joke?"

Re:Well, good bye little blue planet ...

[Grayswan]

No, the universe will disappear and be replace with a MOAR complicated universe. One with TWO (2) even harder to detect Higgs-Bosons. It is rumored this has already happened. More than once.

mitichlorians

[hanshotfirst]

I want counts for each reasearcher. How strong are they in the Higgs Boson?

Re:mitichlorians

[fred fleenblat]

Especially the female researchers. I'd love to spray my Higgs particles all over their lovely Bosons.

Re:mitichlorians

[Opportunist]

Took quite a while 'til someone made this lame joke. Though I was more waiting for something akin to "What? They get tons of money and toys to play with Mrs. Higgs' WHAT?"

such a thing as "overpopularising" science

[petes_PoV]

The Force

Oh dear. This is just increasing the number of people who thing that Star Trek is real. I realise that they're merely out to sell copy, but you'd hope that National Geographic would retain some sense of integrity.

Re:such a thing as "overpopularising" science

[The Ancients]

Perhaps so. Another way of looking at it is that they're trying to explain the article in such a way that allows more individuals - and motivates more individuals - to actually take an interest in, and have a chance of understanding this.

Also, from what I understand from reading the articles, technically they are correct (if a little simplistic). Both affect all particles, living or inert.

Re:such a thing as "overpopularising" science

[SatanicPuppy]

Who cares, I just want to see Spock and Yoda in a lightsaber battle.

Not to be one to pick a nit (especially this geeky a nit), but Star Trek science is bad, but Star Wars science is non-existent. Popularizing science using Star Wars is like popularizing science using Pokemon.

Re:such a thing as "overpopularising" science

[Opportunist]

Not a chance. At least if Lucas directs it, they'll probably start to engage in a battle of "wits" for half an hour, only to fall in love with each other afterwards.

Re:such a thing as "overpopularising" science

[Guy Harris]

but you'd hope that National Geographic would retain some sense of integrity.

They did, as far as I can tell; I couldn't find any sign of references to "The Force" in their article. That crap is from the Gizmodo article.

Re:such a thing as "overpopularising" science

[Omestes]

Please hand in your geekcard at the door.

In Other (Real) News

[DynaSoar]

SciAm, Discover and Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log on MSNBC have all covered CERN's history and present project(s; there's two different Higgs experiments being built), and managed to do so without the silly-assed references to God particles, The Force and Star Wars. Is it too much to hope for that /. will someday stop putting out stuff written for adolescent mentalities and tastes? Probably so, since it's getting worse instead of better.

Re:In Other (Real) News

[Chabil Ha']

The Force and Star Wars. Is it too much to hope for that /. will someday stop putting out stuff written for adolescent mentalities and tastes? Probably so, since it's getting worse instead of better. Or maybe its because when we joined /. that we were (and likely still are) adolescents with mentalities and tastes?

Re:In Other (Real) News

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Or maybe its because when we joined /. that we were (and likely still are) adolescents with mentalities and tastes?

We go to Digg for that.

Re:In Other (Real) News

[StreetStealth]

Digg: Get dugg up for making explicit reference to boobies.

Slashdot: Get modded up for making obscure reference to boobies.

Re:In Other (Real) News

[mikers]

Is it too much to hope for that /. will someday stop putting out stuff written for adolescent mentalities and tastes?

Allow me to furnish you an answer:

Marketing Perspective
Slashdot is merely broadening it's marketing strategy to appeal to a greater number of users

Cynical "get off my lawn" Perspective
The dumb young ones click on more banner ads!

Re:In Other (Real) News

[Anonymous Coward]

It is ok because /. can go back to its FUD campaign against MS, Sony/Blu-Ray, DRM, captilasim and the music industry. Oh yah and don't forget that America is now officially a police state and don't forget to have your daily historical revisionist to make sure Americans did not accomplish that first.

Re:In Other (Real) News

[MadHakish]

Hey there Buzz Killington, we're not all slogging around "silly-assed" references to God Particles, The Force and Star Wars...

Some of us prefer a good Family Guy reference instead.

Re:In Other (Real) News

[Pennidren]

Yes, because it would be terrible if news or science could be turned into fun. Mr. Wizard was a jerkwad.

Thankfully when I go to my job, they squeeze all of that silly, good-for-nothing fun out of the picture so I can focus on... what? oh yeah, slowly miserably suffering every last second of the day until I get old and remember fondly the simple enjoyment of fun. Yeah, let's fix science and news. And video games next!

Re:In Other (Real) News

[Deanalator]

The reason slashdot is going to hell is because you don't use your modpoints properly. If we mod down people who say stupid shit, they lose karma, which makes their posts less visible, and gives them less of a chance to mod up stupid shit.

Slashdot is not getting worse, it is just changing to fit the users.

Re:In Other (Real) News

[Crypto Gnome]

without the silly-assed references to God particles, The Force and Star Wars. I can understand your petulant whining about the Force and Star Wars, but seriously folks - do you not know that "The God Particle" is the common-usage informal name for The Higgs Boson? There is basically nothing wrong with saying "The God Particle" in the same sentence with The Higgs Boson (especially when TGP is mentioned in quotes).

Although considering the previous reference to hyperlinked porn web pages, I for one am looking forward to a time when CERN will get its act together and begin a project to find The OhGod! Particle. (closely folowed by The OMFG!PONIES! Particle)

Re:In Other (Real) News

[torako]

I've never heard any physicist call the Higgs 'God Particle' when talking to other physicists. The term does get mentioned in popular science books / articles, and I always think it's embarrassing and silly, because the Higgs solves only one of the many problems that remain in the Standard Model (albeit a very important problem). And as the Higgs would only be part of the SM, I wonder what mediating particles of unified theories like GWS+SU(3)c will be called, Uber-God Particle? Or the bosons of a theorie that includes gravity, Ultimaty-God Particle?

Re:In Other (Real) News

[imAck]

The cover of the new National Geographic uses the 'search for the God particle' in reference to its article on the subject. It's not exactly a publication targeting adolescents.

Re:In Other (Real) News

[Crypto Gnome]

I've never heard any physicist call the Higgs 'God Particle' when talking to other physicists. Yes, exactly, but *everyone else* (ie us plebs/non-physicists) does (hence my comment about common-usage). Which is entirely different to references to "the force" and "star wars" which is nothing more than crappy journalism integrated with "magic-catch-phrase-isms".

hey

[JeanBaptiste]

it's how you get funding.

God particle?

[Keys1337]

Why would they call it the God particle, they must know they will never find it.

Large Hadron Collider

[Anonymous Coward]

You really can't mention porn and then expect people to read Large Hadron Collider as anything but Large Hardon Collider.

Re:Large Hadron Collider

[Nimey]

I don't think it's that big, Junior.

But don't worry, it'll grow some once you get your pubes.

What the hell is a Higgs Boson??

[Trails]

Or like physicists call it, the Higgs boson, a particle that carries a field which interacts with every living or inert matter.

Pfft, physicists and they're obtuse vernacular can suck it. We all know from Episode 1 that they're called midichlorians!

Re:What the hell is a Higgs Boson??

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, it is very simple and it is a Friday night. See the High Bosoms provide a Large Hard-on Collider where you can eject your God Particles...

Re:What the hell is a Higgs Boson??

[painandgreed]

Pfft, physicists and they're obtuse vernacular can suck it. We all know from Episode 1 that they're called midichlorians!

Which we all know were discovered in 1938 by Wilhelm Reich and called "bions". The Force and it's positive and negative effects were also documented and described under the term "orgone energy".

Spammers have found CERN

[wowbagger]

The spammers are cashing in on the buzz around this project: I've been getting V!@9r@ spam for "Large Hard-On Provider"

Bugger

[Trails]

Yes, I know, "their" not "they're". It's friday, it's 5:30 and I have to work this weekend, so grammar nazis can all go swing.

Good Test For Heim Theory...

[TheNarrator]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_theory#Theory

Empirical confirmation of supersymmetry (for example detecting the hypothetical Lightest Supersymmetric Particle or any other particle predicted by the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model) would falsify all existing versions of Heim theory, which are mutually exclusive with supersymmetry. Also, it is not certain whether Heim theory would be able to accommodate the existence of the Higgs boson, the only undiscovered particle expected in the Standard Model, and one which has not been predicted by the published versions of the Heim mass formula. Heim theory is said to be a Higgs-less theory as it is not dependent on the Higgs mechanism for the concept of mass. The ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider are likely to discover the Higgs boson in the next several years, if it exists.

Midichlorians don't explain the force

[Bryansix]

The force was so much more in ep 4,5,6. Why did they have to screw it up with Midichlorians? It's more like an invisible link between all living and intert objects just like the summary says. How do you think Yoda lifted that rock?

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[Anonymous Coward]

The force was so much more in ep 4,5,6. Why did they have to screw it up with Midichlorians? It's more like an invisible link between all living and intert objects just like the summary says. How do you think Yoda lifted that rock? Why did they separate living from inert particles? Is the philosophical concept of 'magic meat' so widespread in our society that we need to describe scientific theories as dually operating on inert and living matter?

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[Opportunist]

ILM did it.

Yes, we all hate the midistupidans. Let's get over it already. We won't convince Lucas to cut them out of the new trilogy, so either endure it or refuse to watch it.

Sorry, but it's really getting old. It's a friggin' movie. Well, two trilogies, but it's not a religion for crying out loud. I'm with Sir Guinness here, who told a fan that he'll only sign his autograph if he won't watch the movie ever again. It's a movie. A fantastic movie (I'm talking Ep IV and V and to a lesser extent VI here), but still just a movie.

Yes, the second trilogy (I-III) can't hold a candle to the old movies, neither in quality, nor script, nor acting. So they weren't great. Ok. I didn't like the change in pace one bit, but it's still Lucas' movies. Not mine. I may say that I don't like it. But when I keep repeating that over and over and over and over even after the movies have been out for near a decade, I start to look like some kind of fanboy without a life.

For the sake of Pete, get over it already!

(Yes, I have plenty of karma to burn, now mod me Troll and keep whining about midiwhatever)

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[LionKimbro]

Contrarian thought:

I think Star Wars is actually religion for a lot of people.

"It's just a movie" = "It's just a story" = ... ... well, that's what a religion is: a story.

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[raygundan]

Why does this bug people so much? Why is it so offensive that a large, organized Jedi order might know something specific and technical about the operation of the Force that was lost and replaced with mysticism after their fall? "High Science Becomes Magic After Apocalypse" is a staple of sci-fi.

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[0racle]

Because it destroyed the story.

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[raygundan]

Bad acting destroyed the story. Virgin births destroyed the story. C-3P0's inexplicable presence in Anakin's garage destroyed the story. Jar-jar destroyed the story. Midichlorians change virtually nothing, yet have become the biggest internet shitstorm ever. (The virgin birth would have been stupid whether Midichlorians did it or the Force did it.)

We already knew the force was hereditary and unevenly distributed among the population. If it wasn't, yoda and kenobi wouldn't have bothered seeking out an unreliable farm kid just because he was Vader's son.

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[neuro88]

The force was so much more in ep 4,5,6. Why did they have to screw it up with Midichlorians? It's more like an invisible link between all living and intert objects just like the summary says. How do you think Yoda lifted that rock?

With midichlorians, duh.

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[Nimey]

I think Star Wars is actually religion for a lot of people. And that's sad. Mainstream religions at least have the excuse that one cannot *prove* that the religion is made up; not so with a movie.

Unless George Lucas really is a prophet and the gods have one whale of a sense of humor, that is.

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[Anonymous Coward]

I never understood why people got so up in arms when the boring vitalist explanation of the Force was discarded for a somewhat more materialistic imagining. That reminds me of a poem I read where the poet cautioned at studying the moon too much, for then it might lose its beauty and mystery. That sentiment is entirely anathema to the drive of anyone who takes an interest in understanding how and why the natural world behaves as it does.

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[ultranova]

Yes, we all hate the midistupidans. Let's get over it already. We won't convince Lucas to cut them out of the new trilogy, so either endure it or refuse to watch it.

Actually, I don't recall Episodes II & III mentioning them, so I'd say that Lucas did in fact cut them out as a response to the reaction they got.

Besides, Star Wars is hardly the first or only work to fall into this trap. It is therefore useful to analyze and discuss why midi-chlorians were a bad idea, so that future makers of creative works might avoid the pitfall.

Sorry, but it's really getting old. It's a friggin' movie. Well, two trilogies, but it's not a religion for crying out loud.

Star Wars might not be a religion, but creating culture cuts into the very heart of what it actually means to be human, just as deep if not deeper than religion; and it is therefore perfectly reasonable to take it seriously enough to think what works and what doesn't and why.

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because the one who got to describe the Force in epidsode 4 was the same dude who got to hear his master wank about Anakins uber midi count. But otherwise I agree with the whole get over it pov.

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, a bit late comment, sorry about that.

How is a religion started from a movie any different than a religion started from a book?

Yours, AC

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[LionKimbro]

The classical notion of a religion is, "What describes how the universe works."

Science has cleared away past ignorances, and forced clarification: Religion is not about "how the universe works," (physics, chemistry,) rather, it is about how the universe, manifest through the heart, (psychology, sociology, day-to-day life) works.

From this perspective, it is only right and natural that the answers come from (are "made up by") the heart, since it can only be truly known through self-expression.

And yes: George Lucas is (in fact) a prophet, at least to those who resonate with his vision. And indeed, the Gods do have senses of humor -- Religions of the world (especially animist and polytheist) have long recognized this fact. :)

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[Nazlfrag]

There are in fact hundreds of thousands of Jedi worshipers around the world wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_census_phenomenon

Sure, most were joking, but I doubt they all were.

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[rolando2424]

it's not a religion

Several thousands disagree with you

Re:Midichlorians don't explain the force

[raygundan]

How would you go about convincing a country rube that he's got superpowers that the rebels need? Particularly if he and everyone around him already believe that "the force" is some sort of mystic religion, you've lived as a local shaman in a cave for 30 years, and you misplaced your jedi test kit?

"Let me just get a blood sample" is probably not the best opening line.

I dare to say

[harry666t]

...slow news day.

Zen Buddhists "knew", or rather *experienced* such things twenty five centuries ago, and they weren't first either.

But such experience is not considered a valid scientific method, so...

Re:I dare to say

[Guy Harris]

Zen Buddhists "knew", or rather *experienced* such things twenty five centuries ago, and they weren't first either.

They knew, or rather *experienced*, that mass was due to spontaneous breaking of electroweak gauge symmetry by a scalar field?

(Hint: there's a lot more to this than "woo woo, there's something out there that interacts with everything". That's why some people are irritated by the Gizmodo quote in question.)

Re:I dare to say

[ceoyoyo]

Ah, but Oog the caveman experienced inertia and mass long before they did.

MOD PARENT IGNORANT

[l2718]

To those who would then say "Aha! So clearly photons do interact with gravity!", it's important to note that photons may be affected by the curvature of spactime, but they don't have mass and thus don't interact gravitationally. For instance, photons cannot attract each other gravitationally (whereas matter does), and a photon won't attract matter gravitationally.

To those don't understand physics: please stay off physics-related discussions

In fact, everything interacts gravitationally, and has a mass (more properly, contributes to the Stress-Energy tensor). Indeed, photons don't have a rest mass; however, by the famous formula $E = mc^2$, they do have mass-energy -- and this mass does interact gravitationally. It is true that, in general, the stress-energy of a single photon is small enough that it will have negligible back-reaction to the curvature of spacetime, but this is not the same as saying that the photon will have no back-reaction at all.

Re:MOD PARENT IGNORANT

[StreetStealth]

I know we shouldn't rely on /. for physics advice, but last weekend, on the advice of a misguided commenter, I kicked a deuterium atom down the linear accelerator in my backyard the wrong way, and hoo boy! I won't be hearing the last of that one for awhile.

Re:MOD PARENT IGNORANT

[TapeCutter]

"To those don't understand physics: please stay off physics-related discussions"

Discussion eliviates the symptoms of ignorance. If you have nothing to learn yourself, why are you here?

Re:MOD PARENT IGNORANT

[l2718]

Bad phrasing on my part: I should have said "to those who don't understand physics: don't presume to teach it".

Re:MOD PARENT IGNORANT

[TapeCutter]

Now that I can agree with. :)

Re:MOD PARENT IGNORANT

[budgenator]

OMG a linear accelerator, dude that is so off topic in a thread about the Large Hadron Collider!

Large Hadron Collider

[domino14]

Does anyone want to collide into my large hadron?

That would be incredible.

[Dopamine, Redacted]

The most incredible thing anyone could hope for is that the higgs boson isn't there.

No higgs boson would be utterly incredible.

No higgs boson would be like the sudden realization that there's no aether. When we had to swallow that one, the result was special relativity and the whole world changed.

After all, the whole concept of the higgs is a scalar field permeating the whole universe giving things inertial mass. That field quantizes into these little happy things called Higgs Bosons, which, if Higgs was right, ought to be producible like any other particle by pumping enough energy into a small enough space enough times for the odds to be in the experimenter's favor. The fact that you ought to be able to make a higgs boson (and, to be cruely explicit, watch it decay in a rather unique way that leaves little doubt that what decayed was a higgs) is a prediction that's almost something of a side-effect of the existence of the higgs.

Higgs seems a lot like the logic of aether applied to the problem of inertia, at a high level. Aether, if you recall, was some stuff permeating the universe through which light travels as waves, giving it its observed properties.

Higgs plugs a hole in the standard model, that of inertia, that happens to also come from the same fundamental something (mass) that results in gravity. Higgs lets us just sort of ignore the whole inertial mass = gravitational mass thing and therefore not worry about annoying things like relativistic quantum gravity, which is enough to give anyone enough of a headache to be unable to apply enough duct tape to make it work (renormalize the infinities away). It also doesn't hurt that the energy levels we're playing with still leave gravity a pretty meaningless force, in terms of the magnitude of its effect on the actual behavior of particles.

If higgs isn't there, there's a lot of work to do in the standard model again. There would be answers we don't have, and some of those answers could very well go to the very nature of inertia and gravity itself. That would mean physicists can stop playing with toy models of 11-dimensional energy spaghetti branes (I'm not a fan of M theory just yet) and get back to some real work that's testable in the real world with a real supercollider, which we just happen to have build, called the Large Hadron Collider.

Right now, to make physicists deal with the holes in the standard model, without going straight to energy spaghetti branes, one has to bring up something annoying like neutrino oscillation. No higgs would be a field day.

No higgs would make the LHC immediately worth every cent, and woth every politician some physicist had to give head to to make it a funded reality.

I hope the Higgs boson isn't real.

Re:That would be incredible.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

thank you. my opinion exactly, which is why I get all "itchy" with "God" particles. I think the lack of a Higgs is not only more interesting, I think it is much more likely. From my readings in physics and such like, it seems apparent to me that the Universe isn't very Universal... A Higgs boson would give it a grand symmetry and "make sense", but since when has the universe ever made sense? Quantum physics pretty much blows that out of the water, and Goedel prevents us from complete understandings. So, the whole thing is a bit of a hack job. It's as if the universe didn't blast itself into glorious existence, like some grand and opulent sunrise - it's more like a really wet fart of explosive diarrhoea that splattered against the back wall of the hyper dimensional toilet of space.

Sort of.

No Higgs would be the kick in the ass humans need right now - we're on our own, and we're not getting out alive. So stop acting like greedy little fucks and get down to the facts so we can survive in this patchwork disaster of a universe.

RS

Check out Flashforward by Robert J Sawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

Some good SF on when CERN finds the higgs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashforward_(novel)

Photons have mass equivalence

[sshore]

For instance, photons cannot attract each other gravitationally (whereas matter does), and a photon won't attract matter gravitationally.

Photons do attract matter gravitationally. It causes the perihelion shift of Mercury, which is one of the tests that lead to wide acceptance of general relativity.

Under general relativity, "spacetime curvature" replaces the "force of gravity" as a paradigm. Photons make their own little divots in spacetime in accordance with the mass equivalence of E=mc^2.

Re:Photons have mass equivalence

[andersa]

"It causes the perihelion shift of Mercury, which is one of the tests that lead to wide acceptance of general relativity."

No. The curvature of space-time caused by the sun causes the perihelion shift, it has nothing to do with photons.

Otherwise you are correct.

Re:Photons have mass equivalence

[sshore]

I stand corrected on the Mercury bit. The perihelion shift is explained by the non-Euclidean spacial geometry induced by the mass of the sun, on further reading. The effect I was thinking of on Mercury wouldn't make much sense, come to think of it. Oops.

Still looking forward to the laser beams that can redirect planets just by passing by them. (Lens this!) Guess that'll be right around the time that we start using laser beams as propulsion :)

It's much weirder than Star Wars

[DancesWithBlowTorch]

So basically, gravity?

No. The Higgs Boson is a particle that's needed in the Standard Model to explain why certain Bosons (the W and Z) are massive, while others (the Photon) are not, although they all unite to a common field (the Electroweak interaction) at high energies. Some people call the Higgs the "mass giver". I personally never liked that name because it suggests that this Boson somehow carries mass from one place to another, which it does not. It's simply one Eigenstate of the Model after symmetry-breaking that really has to be out there if Electroweak Unification (and thus the Standard Model) are to make sense. If there were no Higgs, all the Bosonic modes of the Electroweak field would have to be massless (so-called "Goldstone Modes"). If this was the case, the Weak Force (which is mediated by the Ws and Zs) would have infinite range, just like the Electromagnetic Field (which is mediated by the remaining mode, the Photon), and that would really mess this Universe up.

But this all has nothing to do with Gravity in the sense of "things attracting each other due to their mass", or rather "mass curving space-time". The Standard Model does not incorporate Gravity in the picture (that's why it's called the Standard Model of Particle Physics, not Physics as a whole). The theory for this force is (still!) called "General Relativity". Despite a lot of really intelligent people (no self-compliments here, I have stopped working in the field as I felt way too stupid for it) trying really hard, we still don't have a generally accepted theory for how Gravity and the other, (quantum) theories can be combined in a principled manner. CERN might help a lot with this but, ultimately, we might have to wait till the big crunch, if it ever comes, to see how all those fields really unite.

But really people, why do we need Star Wars to make this sound cool? This is an amazing universe of ours. It doesn't need George Lucas to make Light and Magic.

Re:It's much weirder than Star Wars

[Omestes]

If there were no Higgs, all the Bosonic modes of the Electroweak field would have to be massless (so-called "Goldstone Modes"). If this was the case, the Weak Force (which is mediated by the Ws and Zs) would have infinite range, just like the Electromagnetic Field (which is mediated by the remaining mode, the Photon), and that would really mess this Universe up.

No. It would mess up the currently accepted model, the universe would tick along just fine. Sorry for being pedantic, I just get kinda ill when people confuse models for the real thing. Blame all the time spent sitting in philosophy of science/physics classes.

IANAP but even if Higgs is false, it wouldn't invalidate what we have so far, in as much that there might be a, as yet undiscovered, rival hypothesis. That said, I'll believe it when we observe it.

Re:It's much weirder than Star Wars

[Gat0r30y]

But really people, why do we need Star Wars to make this sound cool? This is an amazing universe of ours. It doesn't need George Lucas to make Light and Magic. No, but to get it posted on /. you do. Sorry, friday man. Thats it I'm going home!

Re:It's much weirder than Star Wars

[GodfatherofSoul]

I know jack about quantum physics, but a lot of the theories and particles sound like hacks to fudge away anomalies in equations. Is there much push/research out there for an alternative theory?

Re:It's much weirder than Star Wars

[DancesWithBlowTorch]

Your observation is right: The standard model does indeed show it's history in every corner: It was developed to explain strange experimental findings, not to be a beautiful theory. Nevertheless, it provided a lot of theoretical predictions that were later spectacularly verified.

However, it is hard to come up with "an alternative theory": All we have are those very anomalies. This theory operates on energy scales where you can't just go out and roll balls down your floor, like Galileo did. Every experiment involves either a really expensive particle accelerator, a huge telescope/expensive satellite or an enourmus ball of heavy water buried kilometers under ground. And then, of course, Quantum Theory is really strange, because the world is strange. When you look below the scale of atoms, really weird things happen, and our mind has a hard time even grasping what the equations say, let alone what is actually happening. On a fundamental level, quantum theory even proofs that "the world doesn't exist" (in a technical sense, namely it's impossible to assign attributes, states, names, verbs, to things. Imagine having to build a theory of the world that doesn't involve verbs and adjectives!). Of course there are a lot of attempts to build "clean" new, beautiful theories that explain it all (Supersymmetry, String and M-Theory). The problem is that, so far, many of them have failed to produce anything that could actually be tested in an experiment. Those that have (e.g. Supersymmetry) are eagerly awaiting CERN's results.

The last really beautiful, clean theory though, was probably General Relativity. It's so clear and structured that all the trivia about Einstein pales in comparison. He really was one of the greatest minds of this millenium.

Re:It's much weirder than Star Wars

[Rocketship Underpant]

Personally, I'm hoping that the Higgs boson is not found, as further evidence that the Heim Theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_theory), and not the Standard Model, is a more accurate model for quantum physics.

Among other advantages over the Standard Model, the Heim model predicts particle masses from the fundamental physical constants, predicts the existence of dark energy, explains all four fundamental forces, and suggests novel ways the speed of light could be exceeded.

But you are...

[mangu]

Sometimes I wish I too was dyslectic

Well, it's dyslexic... Or is that a simple misspelling, different from dyslexia?

Re:But you are...

[Simian Road]

Whooosh!

Re:But you are...

[WarJolt]

Both are valid spellings. Anyway completely Off topic.

Re:What? May the...

[davidsyes]

Maybe they're thinking... "May the FARCE be WITH you"?

Higgs Bogon

[n6kuy]

There, fixed it.

Space doesn't curve

[Xelios]

Curved spacetime is a mathematical model we use to describe the motion of matter in a gravitational field, it doesn't mean space is physically curved. "Spacetime" doesn't really exist, it's an abstract mathematical concept that combines physical space with the fourth time dimension and that is what physicists use to model gravitational effects.

That's why physicists are so keen on finding a so called "God Particle", because gravity still can't be explained. We can model its effects, but since space doesn't curve some other mechanism must be at work to transfer gravitational force between objects.

IANAP, so if there are any real physicists out there correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:Space doesn't curve

[Guy Harris]

That's why physicists are so keen on finding a so called "God Particle", because gravity still can't be explained. We can model its effects, but since space doesn't curve some other mechanism must be at work to transfer gravitational force between objects.

The Higgs boson isn't what transfers gravitational force between objects, so finding it won't help there. (And one could argue that the Higgs field is a mathematical model, too.)

Re:Space doesn't curve

[Xelios]

You're right, I should have worded that differently. My thinking was that since the Higgs boson is supposed to explain mass it may also help explain gravitation, since the two are obviously linked in some way.

Re:Space doesn't curve

[Guy Harris]

My thinking was that since the Higgs boson is supposed to explain mass it may also help explain gravitation, since the two are obviously linked in some way.

Actually, in general relativity, gravitation is linked to energy and momentum, not just (rest) mass (well, to the stress-energy tensor, which includes not just energy and momentum per unit of space - energy and momentum density - but the flux of energy and momentum), which is why, for example, photons, with no rest mass, are still affected by gravity and affect other particles through gravity.

Re:Space doesn't curve

[Roger W Moore]

In particle physics gravity couples to the particle's 4-momentum. You can actually construct a working field theory for gravity using a spin-2 mediator, the graviton. Unfortunately you have to put an energy cut-off into the theory i.e. it is good up to energy E and not above. Since there is no justification for this (and without it you cannot perform any loop calculations) this is the reason for discarding it and looking for something better.

Re:Space doesn't curve

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAP, so if there are any real physicists out there correct me if I'm wrong

Well I AM a physicist, and every single thing you said in that post is wrong. Thanks for posting this, because it makes my job so much easier: I don't have to post what is correct, just point to you and say "the opposite of that".

Re:Space doesn't curve

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Be careful what you deem to be only a mathematical model. Murray Gel Man insisted his theoretical quarks didn't really exist. But lo, and behold they do. You certainly can't say that space-time doesn't exit and isn't curved, without some proof to the contrary or a separate theory that replicates all of the results of the current one, without introducing concepts that are even more bizarre. In general, as many other non-crack addicted posters have posted, there is a conflict between Einsteins general relativity and theories in particle physics. This should help sort out some things in particle physics, but it won't really be the missing link between the two realms

Re:Space doesn't curve

[TapeCutter]

"Murray Gel Man insisted his theoretical quarks didn't really exist"

Einstein also called his own theory a 'mathematical curiosity'.

Re:Space doesn't curve

[rmerry72]

Curved spacetime is a mathematical model we use to describe the motion of matter in a gravitational field, it doesn't mean space is physically curved. "Spacetime" doesn't really exist...

Spacetime does exist and is very real. There are at least 4 dimensions of space (string theorists suggest 10) and one of time. They are not mathematical models at all - they are very much real.

Gravitational lensing is an example of a physical manifestation of such. Light (ie photons) has no mass and therefore is not subject to gravity as per Newtonian physics (ie gravity acts on mass). Light travels in a straight line in three dimensions (well, two at a time) and appears to curve because those dimensions are curved. There is no "straight" in our universe - its all curves baby.

Also, the expanding universe cannot be happening as observed with only 3 spacial dimensions. There have to be four dimensions in order for everything to move away from us equally in three dimensions. That's why there is not "centre" of the three dimensional universe, any more than there is a "center" for the two-dimensional surface of the Earth.

Its hard for us to "see" spacetime but that does not mean it is a mathematical abstraction. It is as real as gravity and atoms.

Someone explain to me...

[arotenbe]

I've never understood something about the Higgs boson. It is supposed to give the massive bosons their mass, right? And yet, at the same time, it is itself supposed to be a massive boson, right? So, where does the Higgs' mass come from? Does every Higgs boson have an infinite trail of other Higgs tagging along behind it?

Ah, the dangers of getting all of your information from Science News. Mod me "idiot", but I'd like someone to explain this to me.

Re:Someone explain to me...

[ZonkerWilliam]

Think of it this way, it (Higgs particle) does give rise to mass in Bosons, but to produce the particle, no matter how fleeting, on it's own takes a large amount of energy and thus mass since their interchangeable.

Show some respect...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't diss-CERN their language...

Living or inert?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

All matter is made from the same fundamental particles whether it's "living" or "inert". That is until we discover the lifeform field they use on Star Trek.

Question

[V!NCENT]

I am sorry for my lack of knowledge of physics, but could this experiment reveal one or more of the 20 particles that Lisi (that surfer dude) is missing in his "theory of everything"?

Re:Question

[lazy genes]

I personally believe they will find a few of the particles that Lisi predicts. I think Lisi has a different view than Cern. Lisi does not need the god particle. All Lisi needs is a better understanding of string Theory. Lisi needs to find a way to break symetry for his theory to blossom. Lisi has not noticed that the geometry of his force carrying particles form a double helix. But only those that study strings can see the importance of the double helix in his E8 discription. I allready know what the answer is. Im just waiting for them to confirm it.

This is old news

[Pioneer1]

I have written about the Force and physics in my blog last year. I even spent time to put a nice graphic! http://globalpioneering.com/wp02/did-cavendish-experiment-measure-the-newtonian-force/

Don't Be So Rude!

[physicsnick]

Even though you're right, you should be modded troll. There's no reason to be so rude to someone who is obviously interested in the subject. Saying things like this:

To those don't understand physics: please stay off physics-related discussions is the best way to keep people out of physics, and to keep the general public terrified of nuclear power, wireless communication, power lines, etc. Be encouraging if you want people to stay interested.

Re:Don't Be So Rude!

[ScrewMaster]

Yes, and if it were true that this guy is a physicist, I'd say "hey Dick (that is your name, isn't it, Dick?) this is Slashdot, not a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Lighten up." But I don't know that he is, so I wouldn't say that. Regardless, no matter how well-informed or knowledgeable you may be on a given subject, if you're an ass about it you'll get crisped anyway. That's the other nice thing about Slashdot.

Re:Don't Be So Rude!

[l2718]

I may have been very direct, but GP literally says: "To those who have 100% good physical intuition: you're wrong", and proceeds to give a technical-sounding reason. The moderators seemed to approve, since on slashdot what counts is to sound like you know what you're talking about. For me, to persume to teach others in this way (as opposed to saying "I'm not an expert, but I've heard that ...") requires some degree of expertise, which this guy obviously doesn't have. That really ticked me off. And yes, while not a professional physicist I do consider myself sufficiently knowledgeable to write my reply.

I happen to be interested in legal issues, but when posting I am careful to clarify that I am not an expert when making claims about what the law is. or even what it sould be. I usually also don't claim to be so authoritative outside of mathematics, but I made a knowing exception in this case because the example was so egregious. Of course, I also failed to close an HTML tag along the way.

Re:Don't Be So Rude!

[bcrowell]

Saying things like this...is the best way to keep people out of physics, and to keep the general public terrified of nuclear power, wireless communication, power lines, etc.
Maybe spreading misinformation and acting like a know-it-all are also not the best ways of getting an informed public.

Re:Don't Be So Rude!

[ceoyoyo]

I'm sure the original guy thought he was knowledgeable about the topic as well, and you DIDN'T say that you weren't a physicist.

Looks like you're in the same boat to me, except that he made a factual error and you were rude. Of the two, he deserved to be corrected (nicely) and you deserved to be slapped with a troll mod. Which is exactly what happened.

Your post ticked me (and the moderators) off a lot more than his did.

Re:Don't Be So Rude!

[mstahl]

The moderators seemed to approve, since on slashdot what counts is to sound like you know what you're talking about.

Contribute to the discussion in a meaningful manner and be constructive rather than flamebait and some day you'll have your own mod points.

Who coind the phrase God Particle

[RichardEasterling]

When I was in high school I read the book "The God Particle" by Leon Letterman (This is a really good book). I was wondering if the he was the first person to call the higgs boson the "god particle".

people who brought us the W and Z particles

[dpilot]

> the fine people who brought us the W and Z particles

Third Sunday of every month, April through October, is the M.I.T. Swapmeet, a flea market for computer/audio/ham, etc.

To get to the bathrooms, you walk right past the "J" building, as long as we're talking about "W" and "Z".

Photon rest mass?

[CustomDesigned]

Are photons ever at rest? If so, can their rest mass be measured? Is there an indirect way to confirm that photon rest mass is zero? Or is this an untested (and largely theoretical) prediction of relativity?

Re:Photon rest mass?

[WilliamSChips]

If the photon had a non-zero mass(there is only one type of mass. What people call 'relativistic mass" is properly called energy. Having time and space use different units in SR is as logical as having different units for altitude and ground distance in a Newtonian theory.) we'd be able to get it at rest*. We can't so it's mass must be zero.
*Before anyone mentions neutrinos I'll point out that neutrinos interact a lot less than photons.

Re:Photon rest mass?

[Guy Harris]

Are photons ever at rest?

Not really, but the zero rest mass is sort of a limit case.

If so, can their rest mass be measured? Is there an indirect way to confirm that photon rest mass is zero?

Exactly zero, no, but you can put an upper limit on it, and the measurements say the upper limit is 1.1x10^52 kg. (One way to test it is to see whether the force between two electric charges is inversely proportional to the square of the distances between the particles - any deviation from that means the photon isn't massless.)

Gravity != Higgs

[Roger W Moore]

So basically, gravity?

No, the Higgs is basically a binding energy. Effectively most particles stick to the Higgs field and some are more sticky (higher mass) than others. Obviously the more you stick the harder it is to move yourself to somewhere else and this is what we perceive as mass for fundamental particles. (Note: most of the mass of normal matter has nothing at all to do with the Higgs!).

The particle physics view of gravity is a force which couples to the energy (technically the 4-momentum) of a particle, so any particle with energy will feel it. Since 'mass' is simply the energy of a particle at rest and is typically far greater than the kinetic energy (for most particles) this is why Newton came to the conclusion that only objects will mass feel gravity. However, in reality, any particle with energy will feel gravity.

Tibet is in Berkeley now?

[dwater]

Written nicely in an entertaining way for the layman such as myself.

I couldn't help noticing this statement though :

"He has long, gray hair and a long, white beard and, with all due respect, looks as if he belongs on a mountaintop in Tibet."

Those physical features are notably absent from the stereotypical mountain top Tibetan dweller - ie the Tibetan monk. Ah, using Google images shows a couple of people with long beards, but not typical, judging from the results.

My guess is that he's talking about the Unix lab named "Tibet" at Berkeley University where you'll undoubtedly find many such specimens.

Yes, I made that up - I've no idea if there's a Unix lab named "Tibet" at Berkeley.

Make you mind up!

[Roger W Moore]

...but shouldn't they be focusing on something much more worthwhile? Like a working model of a lightsabre. Now that'd be really cool...

Hey - we are still working on your flying car. These things take time!!

Too strong...

[Roger W Moore]

How strong are they in the Higgs Boson?

Well, according to this one's wife, far too strong...at least she's always telling me I need to lose some mass! :-)

Certain winged creature responds :

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hah! I'm a Taydarian, Higgs bosons don't work on me!"

Higgs boson like mud...

[Roger W Moore]

I've never understood something about the Higgs boson. It is supposed to give the massive bosons their mass, right? And yet, at the same time, it is itself supposed to be a massive boson, right?

Yes that is correct, the Higgs boson gives itself mass. If you use John Ellis' example of the Higgs field being like mud and the more the mud sticks to an object the heavier, and harder, to move it becomes. Well imagine you try to move a lump of mud. Mud sticks to mud so even just moving a lump of mud will be hard. This is what the Higgs boson is, metaphorically speaking.

"Smells a little under-the-bridge..."

[perdue]

... is the most excellent euphemistic allusion to a metaphor that I've seen in a while.

Question for the Polite Physics Guy

[greenguy]

OK, serious physics question to follow up.

Photons are affected by gravity (they follow the curvature of space caused by massive objects). But, they don't "cause" gravity, because they do not attract other objects. My understanding is that gravity is relational, which is to say, objects exert a "pull" on each other proportional to their mass. So... how can photons be pulled without also pulling? (I'm going on the assumption their pull is exactly zero, and not just infitessimally small.)

Follow-up: does this have to do with the curvature of space being a mental model, and not a literal fact?

Re:Question for the Polite Physics Guy

[lgw]

Photons actually do pull other objects, just not very much. Energy causes gravitational attraction, and photons have energy. Normally the amount is so small it's not worth talking about (it's small compared to the light pressure, which is damn small to begin with). In a relativistic plasma of the sort found in the early universe and the core of stars, however, light pressure is the dominant force and the total energy carried in photons is significant gravitationally.

Re:Question for the Polite Physics Guy

[l2718]

Just to show I'm not always cranky, here's a sedate reply. Warning: it's long. The short answer is that you can't be pulled without pulling.

Photons are affected by gravity (they follow the curvature of space caused by massive objects). But, they don't "cause" gravity, because they do not attract other objects. My understanding is that gravity is relational, which is to say, objects exert a "pull" on each other proportional to their mass. So... how can photons be pulled without also pulling? (I'm going on the assumption their pull is exactly zero, and not just infitessimally small.)

Let's start with your followup question: the curvature of space is no more a "mental model" than other objects more modern science, such as photons, DNA, or other galaxies. It is a fact in the following sense: the world around us behaves (to a great accuracy) as if it is "really" curved, there "really are" electrons and photons, "there is" a big molecule called DNA with a double-helix structure etc. If you want, a pattern of dots on a photographic plate is a "fact". The double helix is a mental model that explains this fact. But the distinction is not useful when you're doing physics. If you accept that the goal of physics is to predict the behaviour of the world to a given accuracy, you should also accept that it is not useful to make the distinction between what the world "really is" and what it "appears to be" (for our purposes here -- not as a metaphysical question).

Next, you are confused because you are trying to use two different mental pictures of gravity at the same time, and probably don't have a good mental picture of photons. So I will analyze the situation from the points of view of both Newtonian mechanics+Special relativity and General Relativity. In Newtonian gravity, particles are affected by gravity which is an interaction between all pairs of particles. If A attracts B then B attracts A, in fact with the same magnitude of force. The interaction is proportional to the mass, so an object of "zero mass" won't interact with anything, but such an object doesn't make sense anyway (what happens to F=ma in this case?).

Now what about electromagnetic radiation? You can treat it either as a electric and magnetic fields filling space, or as composed of photons. In either case, it has momentum (do you know about light sails?) and also energy (you can be heated by sunlight!). Special relativity says (E=mc^2) that if you have energy you also have mass. You can now make a naive model in which the elecromagnetic field generates gravity according to its energy density (every small piece of space contains some elecromagentic field, this has energy and hence mass; it is a source of gravity), or you can make a model in which each photon generates gravity according to its mass. In the second case you can even calculate the effect of other masses on the photon -- the deflection you will see for a photon passing near the sum is about half what is observed in practice.

The picture above is not self-consistent. The reason is that Newtonian mechanics allows for action-at-a-distance (gravitational fields propagate at infinite speeds) which cotnradicts relativity. A better picture is that of General Relativity: the space itself is now allowed to change with time. Now there are two separate effects: first, bodies moves along the analogue of "straight lines" in a curved space; second, the curvature of space changes with time -- both under its own effect (gravitational radiation, if you want) and under the effect of the "contents" of space. The "contents" including everything in space. That includes elecromagnetic radiation -- it has mass, momentum, and can act as a source for gravity, by changing the curvature of spacetime.

Part o

Re:Question for the Polite Physics Guy

[AJWM]

But, [photons] don't "cause" gravity, because they do not attract other objects.

Whoever told you this was lying or mistaken. Just because they don't exert very much gravitational force doesn't mean they exert none at all.

Want to figure the effective mass of a photon? Determine its energy (from frequency, E=h) and you can determine the mass (m=E/c^2).

Re:Question for the Polite Physics Guy

[AJWM]

Argh. Slashdot ate my letter 'nu'. It was right there after the 'h' for Planck's constant, honest.

Re:Question for the Polite Physics Guy

[physicsnick]

Here's a fairly simple answer: They do cause gravity. They do pull.

The reason is because in general relativity, it is not mass that attracts by gravity (i.e. that warps space-time), but rather energy. The confusion arises because, informally speaking, a small amount of mass has *A LOT* of energy. The gravitation caused by other forms of energy are pretty negligible when there's mass around, which is why it seems to us like it's only caused by mass.

Electromagnetic waves such as light do have energy however, so they gravitate; they attract other objects to themselves by slightly warping space-time. If you've got a lot of light around (like say, the light being emitted by a galaxy), then that can have a non-negligible effect on the gravitational pull of that galaxy.

Other forms of energy also gravitate. For instance, a fast-moving object has a lot of kinetic energy, so it will gravitate slightly more than if it is stationary (this can also be interpreted as the moving object having more mass, as the above poster explained). In the case of plain old space dust it's pretty negligible, but it's very much not in the case of a spinning black hole, which will greatly affect its size and pull. This makes it extremely complicated to achieve any kind of accuracy in black hole calculations.

*sigh* I miss my physics classes :(

Re:Space doesn't curve ... or does it?

[celtic_hackr]

First IAAP (just not a PhD Physicist, so if that is your definition of a real Physicist, well then I guess I don't qualify).

Secondly, it is not necessarily true to say Space doesn't curve. We are three-dimensional beings and thus cannot perceive anything in the fourth dimension. That is not to say that space-time is a physical dimension. It is a handy mathematical model which may or may not have an actual physical representation. The simple fact is, that if there is a fourth physical dimension to space, and there are many who believe there may be, and it doesn't violate any laws, so it is possible. Thus it is possible that Space is truly curved and we in like manner to Flatlanders cannot directly perceive higher dimensions. So the answer, as in many advanced Physics problems is that we really just don't know whether Space is curved or not, although you'll get all kinds of science speak that makes you think we do know.

Lastly, it is common to refer to space as curved when dealing with many problems, and there are real reasons to consider the possiblility that space is truly curved, due to the properties of space around massively heavy objects, such as blackholes and our own Sun, which is massive enough to "bend" light. Or perhaps space-time is curved by the mass of the Sun.

I'll believe that line of shit when I get my...

[Anonymous Coward]

...hoverboard.

Re:I'll believe that line of shit when I get my...

[peterpi]

I lolled :)

the Higgs Boson will not be found

[eyebum]

I am going to predict here that the Higgs boson will not be found. It doesn't exist.
Nope, don't have data to back up my theory, but I'm sticking with it.
</useless opinion>

Fun with spelling

[riceboy50]

The large hardon is looking for Higg's bosoms? I can relate to that.

Re:Experimental particle physics sounds like fun..

[GodfatherofSoul]

Sounds a lot like frog baseball.

Are they...

[shdwtek]

...hacking the Higgs Boson? Too much of a stretch?

Hey! HEY!

[HiggsBison]

...the entire planet will be reduced to the size of a pea once the mass of the Higgs boson is known ....

You wanna knock off the fat jokes!

Be patient my young padawan....

[insllvn]

A mastery of the force is required to responsably and effectively handle a lightsaber. We need the force first so we can use our lightsabers to their full potential.

Use the...

[_Shad0w_]

"Use the Force!" does sound much better than "Use the Higgs boson!" though. Although, surprisingly, slightly less geeky.

Snakeoil?

[Msdose]

I believe I've said this before, but the question of where the Higg's field comes from could be answered if the experiment produces a big bang, followed by an inflationary event which wipes out the current universe in creating the next one ( I call it the Piehole universe as opposed to the time before when the same experiment created this universe, which I called the Snakeoil universe, out of the preceding one.) All trace of this universe will be destroyed, including it's spacetime; not only will we cease to exist, we will never have existed. I'm maxing out my VISA!

Don't be silly

[Per Abrahamsen]

The first thread here devolve into a discussion of the "large hard on collider", and you want the editors to stop catering for adolescent mentalities?

Being professional means knowing your audience.

And listing four other fora that does avoid pop culture references is not an argument for /. to do the same. Quite the opposite, it is argument that that market is already well covered, and /. should continue to do what it does best.

mmm sausage

[bl8n8r]

supercooled magnets, linked like sausages.

Epicycles

[Iowan41]

Stochastic electrodynamics, also known as Planck's second theory, is gaining ground, and even Einstein duplicated everything in classical dynamics. The Higgs isn't a 'god particle' it is a fudge factor particle, just like dark matter and dark energy. Epicycles upon epicycles.

OK, but

[Salsaman]

Since you seem to know a little about it - how does the Higg's model explain the fact that gravitational mass == inertial mass ? Is there some link between the Higgs particle and the graviton ?

Re:OK, but

[Roger W Moore]

It does not explain why the inertial and gravitational mass are the same. It does explain why energy and mass are the same though. Essentially, if the Higgs mechanism is correct, even the mass of fundamental particles comes from a binding energy. To understand why inertial and gravitational masses are equal you need to understand the gravitational force which we might be able to do at the LHC if something called 'Large Extra Dimensions' is a correct model of the universe (but while extremely enticing from an experimental point of view - experimental quantum gravity! - my personal belief is that such theories are extremely unlikely to be correct since they introduce some additional problems which are ugly to fix).

Time messing with space

[sweetser]

Newton kept absolute time separate from absolute space. Einstein allowed time to mix with space for inertial observers with special relativity. In 1915, he opened the door for time to mix with space in any situation using general relativity. Unfortunately, the math is too hard to apply.

I do all my physics with quaternions, a kind of 4D math designed to let time play with space. The smallest act of physics involves time and space playing together. To have time play with space quickly becomes confusing, but that is part of the fun. I have developed software to do this sort of thing using the command line at http://quaternions.sourceforge.net/

In a unified field theory, mass breaks the gauge symmetry EM, so no Higgs mechanism is needed.
Doug

Funniest thread ever!

[mstahl]

LOL

large haRDon collider

[Ooogly]

Do you notice the tag here is "Large Hard-on Collider" instead of "large HADRON collider"? This is my favorite malapropism. I have a website devoted to tracking the mistake at http://www.largehardoncollider.com/

Try to see the truth...

[Anonymous Coward]

...there is no gravity; it is space-time that bends.