Race For the "God Particle" Heats Up

SpuriousLogic writes "CERN is losing ground rapidly in the race to discover the elusive Higgs boson, its American rival claims. Fermilab say the odds of their Tevatron accelerator finding it first are now 50-50 at worst, and up to 96% at best. CERN's Lyn Evans admitted the accident which will halt the $7B Large Hadron Collider until September may cost them one of the biggest prizes in physics."

Comments

How do you give odds for that?

[drinkypoo]

Giving odds for finding a theoretical particle is like giving odds on finding life in the solar system. Without any data to base your odds on, you're just making some shit up. Not only is their level of precision low, but there is zero confidence.

Re:How do you give odds for that?

[Smidge204]

The great thing about scientific theory - real scientific theory - is that is has predictive capabilities. Theory predicts that the Higgs exists. If the theory is correct, they feel that their experiment has a 50% to 96% chance of finding it.

And if they don't find it, it would actually be a bigger deal than if they do. It means something was off either in the experiment or the theory, and that means it's back to square one!
=Smidge=

Re:How do you give odds for that?

[PopeRatzo]

Also, what are the odds the particle doesn't exist AND they find it?

Probably pretty good. After all, God doesn't exist, but millions of people are finding Him all the time.

Re:How do you give odds for that?

[The_Wilschon]

As I said above, no, they're not. I happen to disagree with their numbers, as I can't see how we're going to get the amount of data necessary to improve our sensitivity sufficiently. Remember standard deviation goes as 1/sqrt(n), so to double our sensitivity we need to collect four times as much data as we have now. We need to more than double our sensitivity. But we can tell by just how much we need to improve (although I can't remember off the top of my head), since we have very precise theoretical predictions, and can compare our data to those.

Re:How do you give odds for that?

[The_Wilschon]

Ahha, I should have RTFA. I've been complaining in other comments that no, we won't find the Higgs. But this is a much lower standard. 2 or 3 sigma significance I can definitely believe. We call this evidence for the Higgs, but not discovery. Discovery requires a 5 sigma significance signal (PRL standard).

Re:How do you give odds for that?

[mysticgoat]

Yeah.

We know that the observer is an integral part of the experiment; at this level of physics there is no such thing as a third party observer.

But I understand that we cannot assess in advance the degree of effect the observer will have on an entirely new experiment.

Which leads me to the uncomfortable recognition that we might create the Higgs boson as we get better at looking for it.

What is uncomfortable about this is the way it raises the question: "If we are literally making it up as we go along, is this really the way we want the Universe to be?"

Are enough of the right people asking themselves that?

:-)

Re:How do you give odds for that?

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, God doesn't exist ...

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist [or /.er] states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible [or nonexistent], he is very probably wrong."
-- Arthur C. Clarke's First Law

Re:How do you give odds for that?

[nappingcracker]

Just because you haven't found Him doesn't mean He doesn't exist, I can't find most of the constellations in the night sky but apparently they exist.

Same logic applies to:

• Flying Spaghetti Monster
• Invisible Pink Unicorn
• Zeus
• Celestial Tea Kettle
• Reincarnation
• The Matrix
• Thor
• The Turtle and The Elephant
• Xenu
• Many other things

Re:How do you give odds for that?

[PaganRitual]

"through patterns in chaos. People looking through history (either global, national, or personal) can find patterns that show either an intelligence manipulating the events or an incredible string of luck and coincidence."

Good news everyone! We've discovered god! Turns out it was just confirmation bias under another name.

race?

[period3]

Why is there a race? Why aren't they working together to find it?

Re:race?

[arndawg]

Why is there a race? Why aren't they working together to find it?

Races are good. I don't think we would have gone to the moon so fast if it wasn't a race between usa and russia.

Re:race?

[MyLongNickName]

From a purely human point of view, competition makes us try harder. You may not like it, but it is the truth.

From a purely scientific point of view, repeatability is an important thing. Having more than one experiment confirming the results isn't just a good thing, it is a requirement of science.

Re:race?

[bockelboy]

It's a very friendly "competition". While it *may* be possible for the Tevatron to locate the Higgs before LHC turn-on, it doesn't negate the fact that the LHC will use energies an order of magnitude higher than the Tevatron.

Fermilab - which is where the Tevatron is located - also has a huge number of people working on CMS - one of the LHC detectors.

Most of the "US vs Europe" mentality and the "OMG we're losing our physics crown to some other lab" is a sidebar injected by the media and politicians. Otherwise, it can be very dry (aka, non-newsworthy) work punctuated by moments of "Eureka!"

Re:race?

[arndawg]

As true as the outcome may be, that still doesn't validate the necessity of a race to procure a speedier advancement.

You don't think that if the USA And the USSR had worked together that we wouldn't have gotten there just as quick, if not quicker?

We only had a "race" cause both sides decided to be assholes to eachother after WW2... this isn't a browser war, if we don't work together on it, we'll end up with a "winner" doing spacey stuff, and a bunch of losers back here on earth, and all that this new "class war" would create.

I personally believe if you get a too large group of people. Some will end up not being heard, not work so hard because they feel redundant or just end up wasting a lot of time because of communication trouble. The competition aspect will probably motivate workers more and they will probably work harder. For ex. I think 1 programmer putting in 10 hours of effective work is more effective than two programmers working 6 hours each. There's a overhead in collaboration.

Re:race?

[The_Wilschon]

In fact, a large number of the Tevatron people are also working to some degree on an LHC experiment. I'm on CDF, and planning to do some work in the not too distant future on a CMS track trigger.

Can we stop calling it the "God Particle" yet?

[cjfs]

It's annoying on so many levels.

Re:Can we stop calling it the "God Particle" yet?

[Sponge Bath]

...time to change the hearts and minds of those close to them.

As someone who does not believe in the magic bearded man in the sky and has been pestered for years by those who do, I say to them: please stop. It got old a long time ago, and nothing you say will make me worry about being punished by a supernatural booger man for my failure to adhere to modern human interpretations of ancient human originated scripts.

It's all about cash

[gzipped_tar]

CERN needs money badly. By crying out "The Yankees are catching up!" they hope the politicians would hear and pay them more fresh euro.

In this economy, do you really believe the scientists care that much about the God Particle? If your answer is yes, do you really think it's "yes"?

If they lose jobs and food, how can they go on chasing the Higgs particle?

Re:It's all about cash

[Eravnrekaree]

Its very important for us to improve our data base and understanding of physics. While for some it may seem abstract it is often the case that data which at first seems to be inconsequential and a curiosity plays a critical role in developing some new technology. Understanding how atoms work for instance, gave rise to many new inventions that were probably not anticipated originally, such as understanding how transistors work.

Science is very important to solving our economic problems and collecting data allows science to better understand the universe and be able to develop better technologies. I am one who thinks we need to prioritise resources on science and education funding (especially our badly neglected gifted programs to allow high IQ students to fully develop their maximum potential and go through their course as fast as they wish) , and environmental protections.

Re:No

[pz]

I agree with the grandparent post. It isn't the God particle. It isn't the be-all-end-all-explain-everything particle. Discovering the particle won't prove or disprove the existence of a deity. Using the term is annoying AND misleading.

another nice article

[mzs]

This is from the Symmetry magazine blog:

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2009/02/16/hunt-for-the-higgs-kicking-into-high-gear/

There is a lot of talk about this recently because of the AAAS meeting in Chicago. Also here is another neat article (not related):

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2009/02/16/a-first-string-theory-predicts-an-experimental-result/

Re:No

[FTWinston]

the implications its existence poses

I have to disagree, its discovery has no implications whatsoever for non-physicists, apart from potential future technology.

Its non-discovery would excite most phyicists even more than its discovery, as that means that the standard model is wrong, and that there's a lot more theoretical work for physisists to start thinking about. At the moment, we have many very plausable models of the universe, and measurements are needed to help us see which are closer to the truth - measurements of the existance/nonexistance of the Higgs, and its mass(es), for example.

Frankly, I think a more appropriate name would be "the weakest link particle" as it will allow us to leave a variety of erroneous theories behind.

Again, I'd say that the Higgs has no more business being "the God particle" than any other particle; all particles of the standard model are crucial to the functioning of the universe, after all! And if we're going to be giving them more "memorable" names, then why aren't we rolling out "the Devil particle", "the fun particle", "the justice particle" and so on?

Lastly, what if it turns out not to exist? I can picture the tabloid headlines already: "LHC proves that 'God' doesn't exist"

People will appreciate what its about less rather than more so, if such concepts are given completely unfounded connotations to things completely unrelated. Gravitons would make a better 'God' particle anyway...