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Rumors of Higgs Boson Discovery At LHC
Magnifico writes "LiveScience is reporting that scientists are abuzz over a controversial rumor that the 'God particle' has been detected by a particle-detection experiment at LHC at CERN. The Higgs boson rumor is based on what appears to be a leaked internal note from physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile-long particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. It's not entirely clear at this point if the memo is authentic... The buzz started when an anonymous commenter recently posted an abstract of the note on Columbia University mathematician Peter Woit's blog, Not Even Wrong. This could be a flat-out hoax or a statistical anomaly or... confirmation of the particle that bestows mass on all the other particles."
It is easter..... and it is a rumor too!
crowbar
to make hard-on jokes again?
If this is what I was hearing about at work on Friday (I'm a particle physicist), then it can't be the Higgs. The rate of production is too high by a factor of 40.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
This isn't the first time this has happened. I don't know why this particular event is getting so much attention.
That said, one of the things that's exciting about this is that they are detecting it at higher energies than were expected by the Standard Model, which would mean that a few laws of physics might have to be rewritten. I love it when that happens. It's so boring when everything just falls into place where expected.
Oh, by the way, the new season of Doctor Who. There was something I wanted to mention about it. I just can't remember what it was. It's like on the tip of my tongue.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Let's at least wait for the darn thing to be published.
And knowing how things go in scientific circles it will probably go like this:
Tevatron publishes a 3ð experiment and later refines it to 5ð "controversial, nothing, fluke"
LHC publishes a 3ð experiment that may be Higgs but with wrong mass, charge and color: "OMG Higgs was discovered"
how long until
It's just a "Budgeton". these things appear whenever funding gets shaky.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The Higgs-Boson is a predicted but until now unobserved particle (entity smaller than an atom) that is expected to have high mass.
The problem is that detection of this particle is very costly, involving a particle accelerator the length of nearly 35 football fields and a matching scale beneath it. Other particles are crammed together with great force many times per second using this accelerator, and if a heavy Higgs-Boson particle is created, the building weighs a little more than normally expected for a short time.
As you might have guessed, any sort of event that causes things to weigh slightly more or less, such as tectonic plate movement, tidal forces, or the rising of the sun must be anticipated and corrected for lest the system produces a false positive. A false positive is an ion (or particle) that looks positive at first, but is actually not. This leads to the occasional and premature celebration of the discovery of the Higgs-Boson, which is why this story is currently considered a rumor.
Here's a Wired article about the rumoured Higgs sighting: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/04/higgs-rumor/
Strange how such a small rumor has so quickly acquired such large mass.
Discovering the Higgs Boson would be a huge confirmation of the Standard Model, but it seems like the only reason popular culture cares about it is because of its stupid nickname. Can we just agree to stop calling it "The God Particle?"
Discovery of the Higgs will lead to the theory which describes the unification of all forces, which will trigger the end times: Heaven on earth and the revealing of all truth.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19550880/GUT-The-Grand-Unified-Theory-A-oneact-play-with-seven-blackouts
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
“The reports of my existence are greatly exaggerated”
Was this published by Social Text?
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Someone left a copy of the note on the printer in my office building. (I work on CDF at Fermilab, but there are others in the building who work on ATLAS at CERN.) The gist of the article is that they found a bump in the diphoton mass spectrum at a mass of ~115 GeV. If the Higgs exists, it is expected to produce a bump in that spectrum, and 115 GeV is a very probable value for the mass of the Higgs. (Experiments at LEP ruled out masses up to 114 GeV, but a mass as low as possible above that fits best with other measurements.)
Now, the inconsistencies: The bump that they found is ~30 times as large as the Higgs mass peak is expected to be. However, due to field theory that I don't want to get into here, the Higgs peak in this spectrum could be larger than expected if there exist new, heavy particles that we haven't discovered yet. The latest published result from CDF sets a limit of about 30 times the expected rate at 115 GeV in the diphoton channel. (Yes, this means that, if you're optimistic enough, there's just enough wiggle room to fit a Higgs in there while accommodating both measurements.)
The internal note is very preliminary and uses a crude background estimate; I'll have to see a more thorough analysis before I make any judgment on it. We shouldn't have to wait very long; I expect that after this leak, they'll be working overtime to push out a full published result as soon as possible.
So we've got a Schrödinger memo here.. It is, could be or isn't, but in the end nobody knows what the fuck.. :)
Yeah, it spontaneously broke the symmetry between certainty and attention drawn. Or maybe it didn't.
how long until
Priest says "Hey! You're not allowed in here!"
HB says "Oh yeah? Without me you've got no mass!"
Buh-duh_boomph... I'm here all week...
Three Squirrels
NOT! Everyone knows the Sol system mass relay will be detected by a Nasa probe in 2039 when they finally go and take a look at Pluto and discover it's moon is not a natural formation but some kind of alien device encased in a ball of dirty ice.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
not if it gets patented and that gets into the hands of the oil industry or maybe the tire industry. I can see it now, an auditorium full of lawyers working on the patent and another one full of lawyers documenting ways to prevent its use.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Just add some duct tape to it and all this will make sense!
But seriously, this is great. Either way, this sounds like an interesting discovery and I'm happy to be able to follow this as it unfolds. Rumors or no, this is what makes science exiting and there are far too few moments like this anymore....
I'm going to go listen to "still alive" now. Here's to science...
Absolutely. Now we have a juicy rumor the Higgs Boson truly exists, we can harness it any way we want.
... I like gravity in my morning cereal.
Anyway, be careful
So basically if we discover the particle that gives mass, then we figure out how to manipulate the particle that gives mass, does that mean we get mass effect drives? Because that would be AWESOME.
Yup. Unfortunately, your spaceship has to be 17 miles in diameter...
Who started this trend anyhow and how can we make it stop?
.mpg would be fine too...
This is blinging
It was spreading so fast, it's just relativistic mass.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Would the alleged editors please pay just a little attention? "It's not entirely clear at this point if the memo is authentic... This could be a flat-out hoax or a statistical anomaly or... " or anything but a story. Have some shame.
Cue obligatory Death Star drivel ...
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
(Note - no background in particle physics. Except for particles as large as, say, an apple dangling from a tree in gravity. =) )
This sig no verb.
The Multiverse is coming..
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