Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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
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.
Note that they didn't find the Higgs boson, just got narrower upper and lower bounds on the rest mass. In any event, even if the Tevatron had found the Higgs boson, that wouldn't make the LHC useless. The LHC is going to be used for many things other than the search for Higgs boson. For example, the LHC will be useful for finding supersymmetric particles. If we are to progress at all beyond the Standard Model, such particles almost certainly need to exist. Even given the minimal supersymmetric model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_Supersymmetric_Standard_Model, we still get a lot of other particles. Those particles will be much more easily detectable and analyzable with the LHC than with the Tevatron or any other lower energy collider.
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.
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.
Note, they possibly could still do it, it's not out of the realm of possibility that the higgs boson is going to require more than fermilab can throw at it. Additionally if it turns out that the higgs boson doesn't exist, you're probably going to want the LHC and possibly something bigger to really nail it down. Rather than just eliminate the larger sizes. I don't expect that this sort of research will really settle the question unless there's a positive result and somebody actually discovers it.
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.
Stop using these arbitrary units of measure. Just tell me how many station wagons of backup tapes this is..
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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."
Apart from that you're completely right, I couldn't resist the urge to come up with some far-fetched counterarguments:Pp
1) That's not quite true. It is perfectly possible to cool something with "superhot" laser beams; no need to have something even cooler. Therefore, reaching absolute zero is not impossible by that definition. It is only the law of entropy that prevents us from reaching absolute zero. Or so it says.
2) Since we're reached the purely theoretical/philosophical discussion... zero-point energy only changes with time. So if you'd be able to stop time, it would be possible to stop all molecular motion (which also follows from the definition of motion and time anyway;)). But then again, without time, one cannot observe. We would not even notice if time stopped, maybe it just paused for quite some "time" ;-PPp
3) I believe (but am not sure) we merely don't know how to stop or slow photons (in a vacuum, that is). No known force can do it nor does there appear to be a gap in our knowledge in which such a force might eventually be found. So it is very likely that it is impossible indeed, but as far as I'm aware there's no proof of that.
Never say never;-)
0x or or snor perron?!