Slashdot Mirror
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.
We can all go Sliding to parallel universes, now!
Right?
And people were questioning why we should build such big machines...
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?
So if the Higgs particle is the 'God particle', does this mean that polytheism is the way to go? Yay Hinduism?
My other comment is funny
you gotta love nature. just when you think you figured out what is behind the curtain, nature reveals yet another curtain.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I recall when being an "elementary particle" meant that there would be only a very small number of different types. Now a passe' notion, i understand. ...wait, actually I don't understand.
They built the LHC at Cern for something that was found out at the place they were trying to make obsolete.
Has the old saint in his forest not yet heard of it? That God is dead?
...to build a machine to find magic pixie dust, errr...God particles, errr...special teeny weenie things. I need another bazzillion dollars to investigate cats in boxes to determine if the cats are alive and dead at the same time.
Anybody else think this is modern-day snake oil?
like being able to build ZPM's?
Okay, but this doesn't tell me where my gravity gun is-- Yeah sure I'm getting along great with this crowbar, but seriously give me my gravity gun.
Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
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"?
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?
In 1917 Einstein published a theoretical paper about the absorption, spontaneous emission, and stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. In 1928, Rudolf W. Ladenburg confirmed the existences of the phenomena; in 1947, Willis E. Lamb and R. C. Retherford found apparent stimulated emission in hydrogen spectra and effected the first demonstration of stimulated emission; on 16 May 1960, Theodore Maiman demonstrated the first functional laser.
We now have fibre optics transmitting data around the world instead of giant copper bundles, and it only took 43 years (of course it took another 15+ before it went from the first prototype to the "real world"):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser
We don't know what the results will be, that's why it's called research.
I'm not a historian of science, but my understanding is that it was purely mathematical -- invented before the relevant quantum mechanics was known. As my undergrad QM text (Griffiths, p 356) says, "Einstein was forced to 'invent' stimulated emission in order to reproduce Plank's formula." I believe he justified it with a fairly abstract thermodynamics argument (he didn't identify a mechanism, he just showed it had to be true or else thermodynamics would be violated). Sorry that I can't cite sources -- I don't have them handy.
on the same day. quite a few 'particles' moving there. the odds on that are creepy. 'course many things are now.
the corepirate nazi illuminati is always hunting that patch of red on almost everyones' neck. if they cannot find yours (greed, fear ego etc...) then you can go starve. that's their platform now. they do pull A LOT of major strings.
never a better time for all of us to consult with/trust in our creators. the lights are coming up rapidly all over now. see you there?
greed, fear & ego (in any order) are unprecedented evile's primary weapons. those, along with deception & coercion, helps most of us remain (unwittingly?) dependent on its' life0cidal hired goons' agenda. most of our dwindling resources are being squandered on the 'wars', & continuation of the billionerrors stock markup FraUD/pyramid schemes. nobody ever mentions the real long term costs of those debacles in both life & any notion of prosperity for us, or our children. not to mention the abuse of the consciences of those of us who still have one, & the terminal damage to our atmosphere (see also: manufactured 'weather', hot etc...). see you on the other side of it? the lights are coming up all over now. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be your guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. we now have some choices. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on your brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
"The current rate of extinction is around 10 to 100 times the usual background level, and has been elevated above the background level since the Pleistocene. The current extinction rate is more rapid than in any other extinction event in earth history, and 50% of species could be extinct by the end of this century. While the role of humans is unclear in the longer-term extinction pattern, it is clear that factors such as deforestation, habitat destruction, hunting, the introduction of non-native species, pollution and climate change have reduced biodiversity profoundly.' (wiki)
"I think the bottom line is, what kind of a world do you want to leave for your children," Andrew Smith, a professor in the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, said in a telephone interview. "How impoverished we would be if we lost 25 percent of the world's mammals," said Smith, one of more than 100 co-authors of the report. "Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," added Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN director general. "We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives."--
"The wealth of the universe is for me. Every thing is explicable and practical for me .... I am defeated all the time; yet to victory I am born." --emerson
no need to confuse 'religion' with being a spiritual being. our soul purpose here is to care for one another. failing that, we're simply passing through (excess baggage) being distracted/consumed by the guaranteed to fail illusionary trappings of man'kind'. & recently (about 10,000 years ago) it was determined that hoarding & excess by a few, resulted in negative consequences for all.
consult with/trust in your creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." )one does not need not to agree whois in charge to grasp the notion that there may be some assistance available to us(
boeing, boeing, gone.
ok, what with genetics, medicine, computer, cell, and other technological discoveries and advances being dominated by the US, we're supposed to think physics might be in that group too? But what about all the slashdot articles that say science in the US is dead? Obviously there has been a mistake. If the US isn't dominating everything, then there is cause for alarm and we must all get upset and stuff. And obviously the US is just failing in science and technology. Raise our fists in anger! America, Fark Yeah! //grumbles about inconsistent /. editors, walks off
then they found the higgs boson and it shrank the planet to the size of a pea
Just as the original poster was saying, we might not find out what good these findings are for some time.
As an example, I've found out why ducks poop. Yes, yes I spent years and billions of dollars tracking down the reason so that all of you can take heed and learn the truth: they eat.
Just spending time and money sitting on something for decades hoping for relevance isn't all that useful (as in the example above). I mean, we needed smaller wires and smaller transistors for space flight....so we came up with semiconductors where the entire circuits were built in silicon. (as opposed to discrete components). We didn't sit on the side of the road and count buses.
Scientific progress that requires we wait for years for something to show isn't science...it's loitering. There are *many* clever experimenters out there. Because your 32-year project is funded, theirs aren't.
Every kid who's ever looked at a dish on the table and tried to move it with his mind, eventually gets up and grabs it. Because that's how real learning/discovery/proving gets done.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
USA USA USA
Suck it European scientists, while you were sitting around eating your nutella and drinking cappuccinos while watching boring ass soccer (excuse me I mean football) our scientists just discovered the Higgs boson(s) with an underpowered accelerator compared to your new fancy one at CERN.
USA USA USA
Just kidding Europe I like your guys except Lichtenstein, I hate Lichtenstein.
Veramocor
OK, so now all that's left is to learn how to manipulate these particles, and thus transmute atoms. Or disintegrate them...
Whenever you look more closely, the universe is immediately replaces by something more complex and even more bizzare...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If there are a plethora of god particles. We may have to rethink more than just physics models.
I wonder if this would help out Lisi's theory that the organization, and expression, of particles lines up with the mathematical E8 Lie group?
Garrett Lisi on his theory of everything | Video on TED.com
It's fun to observe from the periphery - this result, the recent confirmation (maybe) that neutrinos have mass (otherwise they couldn't interconvert among their three types)...more and more cracks are appearing in the Standard Model. It's exciting. And probably the answer is 42.
If you have antimatter, interstellar travel becomes somewhat possible. Since nothing else can do that, you'd be stupid to use antimatter for military applications. Nuclear weapons will be MUCH cheaper.
You know, I fucking hate these sort of stories. As usual I click through to arxiv.org and view the paper, and invariably I come away feeling like a goldfish trying to fathom a microwave oven.
I like to think I'm a reasonably smart guy, but these papers make me feel like a moron.
Didn't that have a number of 5? 5 "differing" equations to describe everything?
WHAT A TWEEEEST. The rabbit hole gets deeper.
Hopefully Douglas won't be correct on infinite complexity...
First thing I thought of when I read this is that there are five fundamental forces in the universe:
1. Electricity
2. Magnetism
3. Gravity
4. Weak Nuclear
5. Strong Nuclear
Considering that the Higgs boson was, in part, supposed to help explain how mass worked, it makes me wonder if this is the reason for the number they're arriving at.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
These idiots just keep finding more things to investigate, it is almost like they don't care that textbooks will need to be reprinted.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit.
they just haven't spotted them yet
...last time we ended up with a particle zoo, we found that they were made out of a few smaller particles (quarks) that never really revealed being separate particles, but where you could find it out indirectly.
What if that’s also, in a way, the case here?
Or something else that is not a direct property of the Higgs particle, but only of the situation/position/forcefields/... it is in.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I always found it odd that they called it the 'God particle' as it had nothing to do with God in any sense that I could figure out.
That it is just a modification of 'goddamn particle' make infinitely more sense.
Was interesting to see a Fermilab article from slashdot go across my RSS feed when I logged into my work system this morning. But I'm just an applications developer for the lab, so I'm not scientific enough to make any good comments on the article itself. All I can say, is there has definitely seemed to be more excitement than normal among the 'scientist types' this past week or two..
You'll never see my work on the preprint server (wrong email address). You can buy it on a t-shirt, watch it on YouTube, or look at non-peer reviewed papers.
Doug
TheStandUpPhysicist
http://bit.ly/GEMtshirt the t-shirt
http://bit.ly/GEMpdf Close as I can do to a paper
http://bit.ly/GEMnb Transformed paper into a Mathematica notebook to check the math
http://bit.ly/GEMnbpdf The notebook as a pdf file
Lots of stuff on YouTube
Working on new views of old physics at http://VisualPhysics.org
It dismays me that whenever I (in other circumstances) also claim that the US is the only country to have used a nuke on an enemy, someone says something along the lines of "it wasn't really a nuke". It doesn't matter that they were small yield. They still pretty much wiped out a large part of both cities and irradiated the surrounding areas in a single blast.
But they were only small nukes, so I guess they don't count?
The only saving grace of this mentality is that it reveals people are still ashamed that this ever occurred. So ashamed they're trying to twist the logic so it appears it never happened.
I think you are jumping the gun more than just a little. An extra Higgs doublet (which is where the extra Higgs bosons come from) is just one possible explanation. A far more likely explanation, IMHO, is that there is some systematic error which D0 has not accounted for. However even if it is a real effect there are certainly other explanations that simple extra Higgs bosons. For example I'm sure some SUSY models could explain it (although these do come with extra Higgs bosons as well!).
A far more interesting result is the recent data from MINOS which suggests that the mass splitting between neutrinos and anti-neutrinos might be different. While, again, it may well be (in fact some would say very likely) that the effect will disappear with better data if it is proven then this would violate CPT which is a core symmetry of relativity i.e. special relativity would be broken if the result is confirmed. So if you want to get excited about a still-not-yet-confirmed result I'd suggest you go after that one since the implications are far wider reaching.
At this point in time, I'd question whether they would fund anti matter weapons research. Tactically, do we really need a bigger boom than a nuke?
How else are they going to blow up the moon?!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
An thus shall we name the Bosons: Larry Moe Curly Shemp Joe
Why Dawkins Is Right and His Critics ARRRR!!
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I believe CDF said they did not see this CP violation and its quite possible that the D0 result will no longer be significant as statistics are increased.
We already have time travel. It goes with space travel; or moving. That's where all the (special or general) relativity stuff comes in - spacetime and all that (I prefer timespace, personally).
The tricks to travelling through time at a different rate would be:
a) travelling through time at a different rate without having to bother travelling in space;
b) managing to go faster than the speed of light and hence travel back in time (my understanding is that light sort of.. stays stopped in time)
c) managing to slow down the relative speed you are travelling at so as to travel relatively faster through time.
The other way involves wormholes; or tunnelling directly from one part of spacetime to another; but that would possibly be rather hit-and-miss and you would likely want some sort of gates at the endpoints; if anything, that is more likely to come out of the Higgs-particle experiments, due to being around bending spacetime via gravity. Personally, the most likely sort of technologies I hope to see come out of this research is the ability to manipulate gravity, but that could be decades, if not centuries away - what we really need is a good power source first.
Since this is been nicknamed the GOD Particle is it possible that the first three could be called The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost? Now what shall we call the other two?