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New Bounds On the Higgs Boson Mass
As the LHC continues to run at half power for the next year+, the US-based Tevatron continues to crank out results. Reader hweimer writes "Three new papers in Physical Review Letters present the latest results for the Higgs boson mass coming from Fermilab's Tevatron. The new data mandates that the Higgs boson mass within the standard model lies between 115 and 150 GeV." A year back we discussed the Tevatron's previous shrinking of the search space for the Higgs "God particle."
I'd say your place lies between first and eighth...
I didn't preview my previous comment and so it came out all wrong.
That is 10 to the power of -27 kg... /. is lame.
Oh, 1.783 × 1027 kg! Thanks for clearing that one up!
Any grammatical or spelling errors above are for comic effect, and do not signify imperfection in the writer.
So 150 GeV would be just over 50 elephants!
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
The more I hear about Tevatron's new discoveries - and the slowing progress of the LHC; the more I think Fermilab had something to do with LHCs 'demise'
That's beyond his cranial capacity.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I'm sure if the US cuts the funding, those scientists will get job offers elsewhere, and the United States will be well on the way to becoming a main provider of cheap labor for Mexico and Canada.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
These are bounds for the mass of the Higgs boson assuming it exists. If it doesn't exist, this data is meaningless. What will presumably eventually happen is that we'll narrow the mass down to a very tiny bound (if it exists) which would be strong evidence for its existence. Or we might detect the Higgs boson using some other methods and higher energies, such as those at the LHC. Alternatively, if the Higgs boson doesn't exist then we may end up narrowing the upper and lower bounds until they cross each other. In that case the Standard Model will be wrong and we'll have an interesting day.
So much for Europe being the new frontier for science.
Oh well, I suppose we can always turn the LHC into an expensive underground parking for the Genevans...
500 park jobs per day at a cheap 10dollars an hour... with luck we'll have our money back somewhere around the year 7010...
wasteful science at it's worst. trying to detect something we can't see, 99.999% (at least) of the worlds population wouldn't care if it was found and finding it would have zero impact on the worlds population. the world of physics and physicists needs to take a good long hard look at itself... and try and work out what it's going to do when the funding runs out... next year
I'm sure nobody technically gives a fuck about electromagnetic waves either, until we made radios and wireless and microwaves and cell phones
I'm sure nobody technically gives a fuck about electrons either, until we made TVs and computer monitors (and electricity itself)
I'm sure nobody technically gives a fuck about photons either, until we made lasers and optical fibers to be the backbone of the Internet
They're literally trying to understand what creates mass. If you don't think anything useful or cool can come out of that, you seriously lack imagination. But since you're ACing I assume you're trolling and I just bought it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So 150 GeV would be just over 50 elephants!
Well, that certainly explains why the LHC has to be so big, but... oh wait, I see, it was a typo. In that case, it's slightly smaller than a sugar molecule, I think?
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
I actually had to read your post 3 times, just to see if I could detect sarcasm. The gene pool called and it would like you to GTFO.
Guess What - Your perfect world doesn't exist. whilst 99% of the population may not care (I disagree with this statistic also, by the way) the discoveries made will be beneficial to the future populations of this planet.
You may not care about that; however you would not be on the internet, you would not have electric power, you would not have a motor vehicle, you would not have a large market full of goods from around the globe, you would actually have a pretty terrible life if it wasn't for early greek mathematicians Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes, to name a (very small) few.
You owe your current lifestyle to these men; and our future generations will owe their lifestyle to our mathematicians and physists - only if they get the funding they need, ney the funding the DESERVE.
and finding it would have zero impact on the worlds population
Do as you say, troll.
If you don't think computers are of any impact, then you should give yours away and get off the Internet. Both are technology that exists because of science which as you say is pointless.
I guess to a troll, that statement pretty much is true. One can be an asshole without the aid of any technology.
Seriously, what planet are you fucking on? You reckon (laughing to myself) that nobody gave a fuck about electrons until 'we made TVs' ?!?
Well that is what YOU said after all. Your post, and the one the GP replied to, are both signed the same name.
You gunna change your mind yet again when you reply to me?
but the tevatron does more at ten
I wish summary articles were written so that most people could understand the terms used.
The trouble is that 10^-27 isn't a tremendously intuitive number. Even being extremely familiar with scientific notation, the magnitude is so small that it really defies any intuitive sense of scale. GeV may not be nearly as familiar as kg but eV (electron volts) are an appropriate unit when dealing with particle energies and so are used in most articles regarding accelerators. Given the choice, I would take eV so that people who are following the progress of the LHC and Tevatron colliders can compare between articles.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
You misspelled "education."
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
As opposed to wasting trillions of dollars to destabilize the middle east? Yeah, that's a useful expenditure of tax payer dollars. Perhaps next year we can pay to remove all references to electrons from the chemistry text books while we're at it.
Seriously, the applications for a lot of this stuff doesn't become apparent until after it's been discovered, I'm not sure what people thought they'd be able to do with Maxwell's equations, but I doubt very much that they thought we'd get super colliders and computers out of it.
Seriously, what planet are you fucking on? You reckon (laughing to myself) that nobody gave a fuck about electrons until 'we made TVs' ?!?
He's posting on slashdot. Chances are, he's not fucking on *any* planet.
But yet not the mass of a single library of congress.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
You reckon (laughing to myself) that nobody gave a fuck about electrons until 'we made TVs' ?!?
Well to be quite specific I was thinking of electron beams like CRTs, things that'd require you to actually know something about electrons. You can do tons with say chemistry, but you don't really need to know about electrons to mix various compounds. Including making a battery and thus electricity, which predates the discovery of the electron.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The only thing I think will be useful to come out of this is the coincidental visit of Lexx (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVshOOG2hcc)
Such idealism. Problem is, the young don't vote as much. They are also outnumbered by older people anyway. I don't see the democracies that support the collider dropping funding anytime soon. You'll grow up.
Ah, yes, the old imperial to metric conversion. In the states, we still use the old "Library of Congress" standard unit system. I think the LoC to DPb conversion is 3.2x10^7 books / 40 DDs.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Or is it massive enough that it must purchase two seats?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
From the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, April 17, 1969, regarding the justification for funding the then-unbuilt Fermilab:
Senator John Pastore: Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of the country?
Robert Wilson: No sir, I don't believe so.
Pastore: Nothing at all?
Wilson: Nothing at all.
Pastore: It has no value in that respect?
Wilson: It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.
On the contrary, everyone who has sufficient knowledge to understand the subject knows (and in this context prefers) these units. There is really no point in using kilograms in this context, unless you wanna account for the 11th grader creating a scale of mass...
There are two kinds of people - those who are radioactive and those who have already decayed..
Stop using these arbitrary units of measure. Just tell me how many station wagons of backup tapes this is..
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
I agree that GeV is the appropriate unit. Though it wouldn't hurt to have a paragraph explaining to people not well versed in physics how 1 GeV is roughly the mass of a hydrogen atom.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Well said. Fundamental knowledge about the most basic building blocks of reality are useless and a waste of money. That money should have gone to the banking or auto sector.
The new data mandates that the Higgs boson mass within the standard model lies between 115 and 150 GeV."
No, it doesn't. Look at this graph. At a "3 sigma" level (and don't believe any new science that is not at the 3 sigma level or better), the mass of the Higgs (assuming it exists) is roughly between 115 and 225 GeV. To put it another way, a mass greater than the Tevatron exclusion zone at ~160 GeV is by no means ruled out.
You should consider cosmology. That's the only field I know of where errors at the 10^54 level might be acceptable.
How long will it take to realize that Aether theory had a lot of things right? I don't know much about anything, but I do have a feeling when things feel right. Up until Mr. Einstein, aether was it. The more I see the less I like, and I really wonder how long it will take before science realizes that we are, in fact, in the soup.
I would imagine this is how my family and friends feel when I start speaking computer gibberish. I'd consider myself relatively competent to understand basic principles like gravity, mass, weight, etc, but can someone dumb this down?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model
I know that's probably a hopeless request without some sort of basis in this field, but can someone give the "particle physics for dummies" equivalent here?
I get the impression this is a hunt for some as yet unknown particle?
Not entirely true - suppose you wanted to estimate something on a macroscopic scale, such as the effects on a spacecraft or asteroid from absorbing a Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray (as do exist). Knowing that the biggest one yet detected carried about 50 Joules of energy is likely to be more informative than knowing it was 3 x 10^11 GeV.
Troll? Seriously? It was a joke -- if you laughed then mod the guy funny, if not then leave him alone.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Determining the mass is fine, I guess, but what about size - is it bigger than a breadbox?
#DeleteChrome
Anyone else read it that way?
You should consider climatology. That's the only field I know of where errors at the 10^54 level is not only acceptable but believed as gospel by the world's governments.
FTFY
It's really really really tiny, but it would hurt like crazy if you touched it.
Simplistic enough for you ?
The banking sector aren't that dissimilar from quantum physicists ... they deal with gigantic magnitudes of imaginary "wealth" that ceases to exists as soon as someone actually scrutinizes the figures and collapses the waveform, causing it all to disappear.
Still at least we've managed to capture the Madoff Particle.
Could somebody explain to me, then, how the Higgs Boson is supposed to be responsible for the existence of mass? Until reading this, I had always heard that the Higgs is responsible for mass and I just assumed that massive particles contained Higgs Bosons - that the Higgs was the mass quantum. If they're many times more massive than other particles we know to be massive, in what manner are they responsible for mass?
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
The higgs is sort of the measureable side effect of the physics that 'give' particles mass.
Think of it this way. The Electro Magnetic field "gives" particles charge. (or the charge in a particle interacts with other charges through the EM field).
There are some particles that sorta 'show up' in the equations when you're dealing with the EM fields (photon, W & Z bosons).
The same sort of things happens with mass. Some physicists came up with an addendum to the current equations that would explain how the mass of particles interacts. These equations have in them (depending on version) 1 or more particles (Higgs bosons).
So it's not so much that the Higgs gives particles mass, but by detecting the Higgs, we prove the existence of the Higgs field which allows mass in particles to interact.
What?
I think you meant Watt's ?
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Funny? I'd mod this insightful
115 GeV? Sounds like Fermilab is on half power too. When Europe gets there at full power, it will surely be 240 GeV. Ever heard of 'mains hum'?
You should consider climatology. That's the only field I know of where errors at the 10^54 level is not only acceptable but believed as gospel by the world's governments.
You can't say THAT!
[insert character assassination as appropriate; don't question the establishment bro!]
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
That's all well and good for you Yanks but can you convert that into Double-Decker-Buses for use Limeys?
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
I doubt any physicist would refer to the Higgs boson as "God particle" and that's obviously not the case in TFA. So why kdawson is feeding this idiotic meme ?
Next time we speak about serious science are we going to refer the research subject's as "pixie dust" or "Satan ichor" ?
http://www.transparency.org
Whenever anyone questions the value of a particular line of scientific enquiry I remind that we had lasers sat around in research labs for a long time before anyone thought of anything useful to do with them. Now the average person has a few at home, and they form part of the backbone of our entire communications network.
Just because we can't think of anything practical to do with it now doesn't mean it won't be life-changing at some point in the future.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Actually, one Dolly Parton's bosom (DDb) just happens to be exactly the same mass as that of a Double Decker Bus (DDB). Confusing, but convenient!
which is totally what she said
Yeah, that's working out really well for Africa and the middle east so far! Sure will be a lot of fun if your economy completely tanks and you have all those guns lying around..
which is totally what she said
No, no, no! That money should be going to GOD! He's a bit strapped for cash and forgot how to make more after his narcotics binge in the dark ages.
which is totally what she said
To make it understandable, the energy can be converted into a relative "human" form so a person can understand it.
For example, 1TeV is about the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito. While the equivalent of 15% of the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito isn't much (150GeV) it is a LOT of energy for a single subatomic particle.
As a comparison, the Planck energy is about the equivalent of the energy released from burning a full tank of fuel in a typical family car. It shows that even our most powerful atom smashers are puny in comparison to some of what happens in the universe . . .
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The banking sector aren't that dissimilar from quantum physicists ... they deal with gigantic magnitudes of imaginary "wealth" that ceases to exists as soon as someone actually scrutinizes the figures and collapses the waveform, causing it all to disappear.
Still at least we've managed to capture the Madoff Particle.
Yay, thanks for that. Now I'm scared to check my bank account balance. So long as I don't look, the money might still be there...
Schrodinger's Savings and Loans anyone?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
but.. isn't mass directly related to the space itself? I've always been of the thought that space was the field mass was a part of, and any particles of space (matter) was in fact the evidence of a field (space) and mass-particles (matter).
Of course this is important research, it's definitely worth asking the question, is mass a sign of a different field than space, like EM is a different field than space. I'm pretty sure though that the question will be no.. Mass of particles is in my mind linked to matter-particles being mass-particles in the space-field so to speak.
But then if anything interesting comes out of it, it'll give us a better understanding of the space-field, which is needed I think.
K.
Just released yesterday I think. Some cool new stuff discovered at the rhic at brookhaven national labs. http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=1074 "“This research offers significant insight into the fundamental structure of matter and the early universe, highlighting the merits of long-term investment in large-scale, basic research programs at our national laboratories,” said Dr. William F. Brinkman, Director of the DOE Office of Science. “I commend the careful approach RHIC scientists have used to gather detailed evidence for their claim of creating a truly remarkable new form of matter.”"
every single one of these colliders will be recycled and reprocessed into long term and far more useful gear like wind turbines
You are right in the first part of that statement, the colliders are being recycled. However I am not aware of any being turned into wind turbines.
I know someone on the D0 group at Fermi, and was talking about collider fate with him recently. He pointed out that many of the facilities that are now serving as synchrotons (or high-energy light sources, such as Cornell's CHESS) which make significant contributions to structural biology. Currently we have less than 10 synchrotrons in the US - and many more structural biologists - so increasing that total can help a lot.
However your assertion of "far more useful gear" is a statement of opinion. High energy physics creates a lot of jobs, and a lot of valuable research for the public good.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You should consider cosmology. That's the only field I know of where errors at the 10^27 level might be acceptable.
The scientists are searching through a parking lot for a car that may or may not be there. The parking lot is 100ft tall and they have searched the lowest 60 feet of it. If the car exists and conforms to their understanding of what a car is then it will be found by searching the next 40 feet. However, they have ladders and the equipment to keep climbing past the top floor of the parking lot. If they find the car floating 30ft above the top floor of the parking lot they will have to redifine what a car is. Yes that's right, you heard it here first; The Higgs Boson = flying cars. Let's make it happen people.
http://xkcd.com/702/
Well ...
... maybe not.
Most people use the word "particle" to mean a small solid object, and I think it is fair to say that quarks, gluons, and the Higgs can't meaningfully be categorised in this way. It is not surprising that early mathematical physicists often emphasised concentrating on the wave equations and not trying to assign physical meanings.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Hello: Time for me to fight the LHC propaganda machine with my own efforts. The unified standard model doesn't need the Higgs mechanism. http://www.zazzle.com/the_stand_up_physicist_said_tshirt-235942932145293980
Working on new views of old physics at http://VisualPhysics.org
They're literally trying to understand what creates mass
No no no, they've already figured that out. Decades ago. You even know the name, "Higgs". We also roughly know the mass. There's very little we don't claim to know, and discovering that doesn't teach us anything.
The only success we should hope for at LHC is that they *don't* find the Higgs. Then the HEP world will have to face the fact that everyone knows but won't publicly admit, that the SM is almost certainly incomplete. But since we have no idea what would replace it, few are willing to come out and say so. Because then wouldn't be able to get the billions to build these devices, and people might have to get real jobs.
Maury
In fact, the definition of a field is something that assigns a value to every point in space. The EM field associated with a charged particle (which could be moving) assigns E and B vectors to every point in space, for example. You are probably thinking in terms of relativity, which involves the concepts of matter causing space-time to be curved. The trouble is that relativity needs to be reconciled with quantum mechanics - it doesn't give you any insight as to WHY there is gravity. The way to do that is by figuring out what causes gravitational fields, and the way to do that is to find the particle - Higgs - that mediates the field (in the same way that photons mediate the EM field). Space itself, though, isn't a field.
Seriously, the applications for a lot of this stuff doesn't become apparent until after it's been discovered, I'm not sure what people thought they'd be able to do with Maxwell's equations, but I doubt very much that they thought we'd get super colliders and computers out of it.
You just told the average idiot that the science they think is useless led to the invention of a giant money-wasting useless science machine, and a toy.
Here is the list of worthwhile results of science to the average moron:
Fire, as used in cooking
Paper, ink
Firearms
Automobiles
Cameras
Telephones
Computers (including gaming consoles), as used for facebooking, twittering, porn, gaming
Cell phones, particularly iPhones and Blackberries
Try to include some of these technologies into your justifications for scientific endeavors that don't yield immediate, tangible results. Be sure to mention some of them specifically, for example they won't understand integrated circuit -> microprocessor -> small computers -> iPhone.
So, to fix your statement for you:
Seriously, the applications for a lot of this stuff doesn't become apparent until after it's been discovered, I'm not sure what people thought they'd be able to do with Maxwell's equations, but I doubt very much that they thought we'd get (redacted) and Xbox360s, facebook, twitter, internet porn and iPhones out of it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Is there any chance this "Higgs field" could allow us to create artificial gravity? (Forgive me if this is a stupid question, I'm a sci-fi fan, not a physicist.)
1) You can't get to absolute zero - to get something that cold would require you to chill it with something even colder, which is impossible by definition.
2) Even if you could get to absolute zero, all molecular motion doesn't stop - the particles still have what's called "zero-point" energy, which means they would still be moving a little. For them to be completely stopped would violate the uncertainty principle: you'd know their position and momentum exactly.
3) Obviously, just because things stop moving doesn't mean their mass disappears. Does your car become massless when you put it in your garage? For a photon, the concept of "rest mass" is pretty much purely a mathematical idea - they can't ever stop moving, so their rest mass is never directly in evidence.
... that the overall particle physics community is not real enthusiastic about the "God particle" terminology. There's nothing particularly "god-like" about it.
Or if one would rather deal with temperature: divide 1 eV by the Boltzmann constant and use 11,605K.