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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."
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's annoying on so many levels.
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.
Wow thats a worse investment than that stimulus package
You mean it in jest, but the "stimulus package" (aka handout for the rich) is going to provide more ammunition for the robber barons to shoot at us with, whereas these colliders are going to lead to developments in science whether they find this particle or not.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, but can the tevatron create black holes or rip the fabric of the time/space continuum? GO CERN!
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.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
It's all about funding. If one establishment can make an unsubstantiated claim that attracts publicity and therefore money, then why not. It's not as if their scientific credibility (cough, cold-fusion) will be questioned. If so long as they don't say it's certain that they'll produce a given result, they can always claim "well, if we'd had more money ..."
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
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!"
There are two leading explanations for why it was called the God particle:
1) It will explain how the universe was created (or at least bring us significantly closer), from a scientific standpoint. Finding it will not disprove the existence of a deity, nor will not finding it prove the existence of one.
2) It was nick-named that as a tongue-in-cheek 'We think this particle is everywhere but nobody has actually seen it.' (this came from an earlier Slashdot article, you can look it up for yourself later)
If this is anything like the last time a scientist tried finding the clitoris it could be a long wait.
On the other hand, Newton tried to cover up the Calculus, just so he could have the edge over other natural philosophers. Some competition is harmful. It depends.
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.
It was referred jokingly to as "that goddamn particle" ... but the relevant newspaper wasn't allowed to print such obscenties. Hence they went with 'God particle' and the nickname stuck, in the media at least.
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.
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?
No if we had worked together things would still be tied up in a international comittee and at best we would have a non-binding resolution to send a strongly worded letter to the moon stating our intentions to visit it someday.