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Fermilab Experiment Hints At Multiple Higgs Particles
krou writes "Recent results from the Dzero experiment at the Tevatron particle accelerator suggest that those looking for a single Higgs boson particle should be looking for five particles, and the data gathered may point to new laws beyond the Standard Model. 'The DZero results showed much more significant "asymmetry" of matter and anti-matter — beyond what could be explained by the Standard Model. Bogdan Dobrescu, Adam Martin and Patrick J Fox from Fermilab say this large asymmetry effect can be accounted for by the existence of multiple Higgs bosons. They say the data point to five Higgs bosons with similar masses but different electric charges. Three would have a neutral charge and one each would have a negative and positive electric charge. This is known as the two-Higgs doublet model.'" There's more detail in this writeup from Symmetry Magazine, a joint publication of SLAC and Fermilab. Here's the paper on the arXiv.
Simply because you or I cannot find an immediate use for something does not mean that it is not useful. Who knows, in 15 years, knowledge gained through these experiments could lead to a better method of harvesting energy from some unknown source, or coming up with a better means of propulsion or medicine for a problem that we thought was mundane (subatomic cure for the common cold? who knows).
It is for this reason that science should be pursued so that when someone infinitely smarter than you combines this bit of knowledge with another bit, mankind sees a tangible benefit.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
This is great and all, but does this mean we'll finally get some great new technologies like artificial gravity, FTL propulsion or communication, quantum-fluctuation energy, or interdimensional travel?
We're still getting new technologies out of the strange sub-atomic stuff others started discovering c. 120 years ago.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
When Einstein wrote about the stimulated emission of light in 1917 (The paper is called "Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung"), there was (a) no example of it known in nature (still isn't, I think) (b) no known way to produce it and (c) no known application. Welcome to LaserFest
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Anyway, from the Symmetry write up:
While the Tevatron can perform these indirect searches, it is too early to tell yet if the Higgs bosons would have masses the Tevatron can detect or would only be within reach of the higher-energy LHC.
not the portentious/pretentious "God Particle".
Leon Lederman called it The Goddamn Particle because finding it---or them---is so vexatious.
His editor changed the title of the book, removing the -damn, to make it more commercially successful.
quoth Peter Higgs: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/30/higgs.boson.cern
Shall y'all moderate this "Informative" or "Funny"?
Mods: granted this is off-topic, but I'd like to indulge the parent post's questions. I am a biophysicist.
Let me have a stab at explaining the history of stimulated emission and lasers.
Einstein predicted stimulated emission based just on two things: the fact that atoms can absorb light and the fact that thermodynamically, as you approach infinite temperature all possible arrangements of particles become equally likely. Consider a collection of atoms that have a ground and an excited state. As temperature (and black-body radiation) increases, more and more photons will pump atoms into the excited state. Excited states naturally decay after a certain lifetime, but without stimulated emission, at higher temperatures more and more atoms would get pumped into the excited state, until an arbitrarily large fraction of atoms would be in the excited state at arbitrarily high temperature. However, from thermodynamics we know that as you approach arbitrarily high temperature there will be a 50/50 mix of ground state and excited atoms, since high temperature favors disorder (entropy) and 50/50 mixes are maximally disordered. Therefore, there must be a process whose rate is proportional to the intensity of the thermal radiation in the system that takes an atom from the excited to the ground state; this is stimulated emission.
Different people give credit to different inventors of the laser, but you can make a good case for Charles Townes' input being timely and critical. He figured out that putting a gain medium (a material with population inversion - more atoms in the excited than the ground state) in an optical resonator would produce coherent light through stimulated emission. He turns 95 next month, and is still going strong last I heard.
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
Fair enough, let's address those claims.
The construction of LHC was approved in 1995, way before there was a crisis in Europe. The total project cost (about half of the $10B figure according to this) is therefore spread across more than 15 years (assuming not all experiments have been run) and 20 countries. CERN's budget for last year was about $1B (see previous link) and a similar figure in 2008 and I fully expect them to spend that money on nuclear research, as per their charter; there are other organizations that concern themselves with world hunger, bank bailouts, etc.
Now, let's put the numbers into perspective.
There are *individuals* that can finance the LHC 5 times over. Speaking about countries, in 2009 Germany was the largest contributor to CERN with ~$200M, which was roughly 0.006% of their GDP.
Oh, and by the way, the discovery was made at Fermilab's Tevatron, which is both older and significantly cheaper than the LHC.
That is Douglas Adams theory, one of many brilliant theories in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (http://www.amazon.com/Hitchhikers-Guide-Galaxy-Douglas-Adams/dp/0345391802).